We Are Legend
by chocca2
Summary: Co-written with H.T. Marie for spn bigbang. They averted the Apocalypse, but getting Dean out of Lucifer's clutches wasn't the end of the brothers' nightmare--only the beginning. Read more inside... Dark!fic
1. Chapter 1

**Authors**:** H.T Marie** and **Chocca2**

**Characters**: Sam, Dean, Doc Benton, Castiel, and the Unheavenly Host, Goth!Dean, Angelpowers!Sam, Antichrist!Sam  
**Words**: ~32,000, written for **spn_j2_bigbang**  
**Warnings**: Violence, gore, creepiness, foul language, death(not permanent), more death(not permanent), really impossible science **fiction**, abuse of theology. In this universe Antichrist=/=Lucifer, they are two separate entities.  
**Summary**: They averted the Apocalypse, but getting Dean out of Lucifer's clutches wasn't the end of the brothers' nightmare--only the beginning. Now, Sam's a renegade. He has the power of the Four Horseman at his fingertips, but all he really wants is his big brother. Forever. And what Sammy wants, Sammy gets. Except Dean, still bearing the physical "scars" from his interlude with Lucifer, has plans of his own, and he won't back down, no matter what Sam throws at him. What he does, what _they_ do to find each other crosses the line from creepy into downright macabre, but when have Winchesters ever done anything half-assed? This is Subject Two meets one determined sibling.

This is what happens when the Antichrist plays God.

**Disclaimer:** Don't own. No harm intended. Fair use only.  
**Betas:** **pixel_0**, **redheadforever**, **ysbail**, **riverbella**

**My A/N:** I'm wondering if this is the darkest fic I've been involved in? lol And perhaps I should be worried I'm having to think hard. Anyway, this one is up there with the rest. It's dark and deep and layered. You'll also find hints and smidgens of crack thrown in for good measure, basically its one hell of a ride. It's been not only a privilege but also a pleasure to work with H.T. Marie on this story, my first co-write and first big bang piece. And I'm glad to say I don't think it'll be my last. However there's no denying it was a challenge, but a good one and another great big learning curve. Big thanks to our amazing and wonderful beta's. As for you wonderful readers, hope you make it to the end, can't wait to hear what you think.

**H.T. Marie/Tracy's A/N:** Um, wow, there's so much more room for author notes on LJ. I just wanted to say that this story in all it's whacked macabre horrific glory is one of the few things I've written (cowritten) in the last year that made me feel like a writer. I can regurgitate plot all day long, but this one made us work. I'll probably never be happy with every detail. I like the boys to tell me what their final words on a story would be, but this time, they were mum. I'd be mad at me, too, if I was them. This story isn't for the faint of heart or for those seeking out the Comfort end of the Hurt/Comfort scale, but I like to think if you go into the story loving both boys, you'll come out of it loving them even more, no matter what they do in the course of things. This is not a story of doom and gloom. It's a story of redemption, and ya know, redemption is a long, hard road. If you get to the end and still have WTF tattooed on the insides of your eyelids, feel free to PM either of us. There are comprehensive author notes on LJ, but this site won't allow links. Thanks for giving it a try.

* * *

-- _**May, 2009  
**_  
Dean always was a love 'em and leave 'em kind of guy. Sam just never figured he'd ever leave... well, Sam. Not during the Apocalypse, anyway.

It started with bright light and dread, ended with Sam and Castiel, trench coat tattered and singed around the edges, outside St. Mary's. One second, Dean was there, strategically wedged between Sam and the rising presence behind them as they made a last-ditch attempt to run away and, hopefully, live to fight another day. The next, Sam whiplashed, arms and legs spinning around him in a slowly revolving vortex like something out of a Keanu Reeves movie, only to be spat out on the other side, the convent collapsing into an abyss behind them.

And wham, bam, thank you Sam, Dean was gone.

"Dean!" He managed only one swaying step back toward the building, hardly considering whether the dark cloud billowing from every window and doorway was dust or smoke or demon, before he hit the end of Castiel's arm and fell to his knees.  
"Dean… is not there any longer."

"Then where is he?" Sam jerked loose of Castiel's grip and found himself unable to stand, ended up sunken down over his haunches, something ironically mirroring hero pose. Some hero. "He isn't…?"

"He is alive, but..."

"But...?"

"Lucifer has taken him."

"How do we take him back?"

"We don't."

**We Are Legend**

--_**October, 2013, Lansing, Michigan**_

"You're as pig-headed as your father, you know that? And you carry on like this, you'll get yourself killed. Again. And this time it'll be for good. Ain't no angel getting you outta Hell twice. God damn it, boy, answer the friggin' phone. Let me know you're alive. You owe me that!"

Dean pressed the phone to his forehead. He clicked through to the next message recorded an hour later. More of the same. Bobby really needed to give it up.

--_**November, 2013-Cabin**_

Along with the glassware, he inventoried his syringes, needles, catheters of various sizes, and a pharmacy's worth of various anesthetic drugs, general and local, depending on the job. No antibiotics of any kind, not antibacterial or antiviral; no antihistamines or analgesics either. Only room for the bare necessities.

He was surprised at how little time it took to get everything in order, found himself bored with time to spare. It wasn't until he dropped the last box in the corner and opened it to find all the phones inside, some of the masking tape labels curling at the corners but otherwise undamaged, that he realized why everything was going so smoothly. No interruptions.

He tapped his headset. It used to hurt his ear like a son of a bitch, but now he forgot he even had it on. "What's up, Doc?" His expression slipped when there was no reply. So, maybe his mike was broken. Snagging his phone off the countertop, he opened the keypad, and typed, "Doc?" waited in vain for an answer, then gave up. He dropped the phone into his pocket as he strode onto the porch. Heavy footfalls vibrated some remnant snow off the gutters and into his hair. "Doc?"

The refrigerator was sprung, one of the hinges bent from all the moving. It had tipped over twice in the back of the truck, and that was before he unloaded it by backing the Mule and trailer up to the porch, opening the tailgate, and popping the clutch. What? He was only one guy. No one really expected him to carry an entire refrigerator onto the porch, Antichrist or not. So the latch was broken and the hinges sprung, either not opening at all or slamming the porch wall when a breeze caught it wrong. He'd have to get a bungee cord to hold it.

Ignoring the crack and groan, he opened it in one swift move, the screws popping out of the metal like they'd only been staples. Plastic staples. He grimaced, mostly out of habit, and well, general dislike, to find the disembodied head turned face down, several loose wires dangling from the ceiling and tangled up with the stale pine tree air fresheners strung up around it. He huffed, laughing, almost enough heat in it to cloud the air around him. "Whoops. Looks like the trip was rougher than I thought."

He reached inside, grasped the head by the hair and turned it over, Doc Benton every bit as homely as he was when they put him in the ground, only now much easier to handle, having no body to speak of. Not just any superpower wielding villain would have a disembodied head as his henchman, but Sam had no choice. The good doctor's book never got a dose of that immortality serum he'd cooked up, and decomposing human corpses are pretty oily. What pages were salvageable were completely transparent, the ink long-since wicked away. The rotting head, and its raunchy sense of humor had the only known recipe for immortality locked away inside it. So, they were stuck together. Like Ren and Stimpy. Neither one was especially thrilled. The doc's eyes fixed in a glare, his mouth moving wordlessly in what was foul in more than stench.

Sam read his lips, chuckled deep in his chest, sunglasses sliding so he caught a glimpse of yellow for just a second before his focus broadened again. "Sticks and stones," he tsked. Then, he located the eye hook screwed into the top of the doc's skull and reattached the head to the top of the chest where it belonged. "Looks like some of your wires came loose, there." He plugged a few of the loose electrodes into corresponding holes in the cranium like he was hooking up stereo equipment, then pulled out his phone again and said, "Can you hear me now?"

"Fuck you," returned almost instantly, electronically simulated and without inflection in his earphone.

"Yeah, well I missed you, too, you rank bastard," Sam said, waving his hand over the putrid compartment. "Gotta get you fixed up. Company's coming, you know." When the doc's eyes widened, Sam's yellow irises mirrored back at him a mischievous glow that made the doc's mouth pull into a tight line.

"You're really going through with it." Metronome flat accusation in his ear.

"Damn straight. Ready to party. Got the punch and the little extra zip we talked about. Just gotta send out the invitations."

"You're insane."

"Tell em something I don't know." He slammed the lid and went back inside.

--_**November 2013, New Orleans, Louisiana**_

"When you decide to get your head out of your ass, I'll let you in on the info I got on…on this damn suicide mission you're on. Don't you think I'm giving you shit over phone messages, you hear me? Pick up the damn phone."

A sigh, long suffering even, because there was no one around to give him shit for acting like a girl. He hit redial as soon as he heard the click at end of the message. Pressed the cell to his ear.

"About fucking time, boy."

"What you got, Bobby?" He didn't catch much more than Colorado and abandoned pickup registered to Sam Winchester before he hit the highway. He left a few things behind in his haste, but he always kinda knew they wouldn't really do him any good, just distractions to pass the time while he waited. And now, he was done waiting. He hung up without saying goodbye.

--_**November, 2013-Cabin**_

"And goodbye to you, too, ya idjit..."

Just the right amount of drawl and muffle. Perfect. Bobby couldn't have said it better himself. Sam was banking on it.

If someone had asked ten years ago which super power Sam would like to have, he'd probably have said something like x-ray vision or the ability to breathe underwater. He had no idea the power of persuasion was the best thing ever, but it so was. He preferred it to all his other powers, even the one that had finally finished off Lucifer. The ability to inflict disease on anyone who pissed him off, or draw the dark forces like a magnet were nifty party gags (better if he could actually turn them off) but making people believe everything that came out of his mouth was gospel was a far bigger rush than anything he'd imagined he'd get in a courtroom playing Perry Mason. He had an eternity to face, long-term goals-- places to go and people to see-- and where there were people, there were minions. All Sam had to do was say the word. Now that was power. And it was intoxicating.

Of course, being able to disguise his voice to sound like anyone-- anyone like Bobby Singer-- was handy for the most skeptical of the lot.

Sam grinned and let the phone slide out from under his chin, down the plane of his chest and into the crook of his thigh only to remember his hands were otherwise engaged. Shutting it off was a matter of staring at it for a second or two in frustration and then mashing the end button with his elbow. The catheter in his right arm pinched a little but didn't dislodge from the vein. Blood flowed in an unbroken line down into the stainless steel bucket between his feet where it emptied in a steady trickle beside the identical stream from his left arm. It wasn't quite red anymore, but it wasn't quite human either. What would have been the point of that? Dean already had plenty of _human_ blood.

"Black gold... Texas tea..." He never liked that show, but at least the annoying theme song supplied him with a suitable euphemism to make harvesting tainted blood a lot more innocuous than it probably was. Always the PR guy, even if he never quite broke into politics.

Never quite a lawyer. Never quite a politician. Not quite General, Admiral, or Commander in Chief either. Anyway, now there was no army to lead, all gone back to Hell or scattered to the ends of the earth since Lucifer's demise. Ah, well, Christ has his forty days in the desert. The Antichrist was no different. Except the Boy King's devil had an angel on his shoulder and was determined to win this round.

"But hey, he ain't heavy." Sam chuckled low in his chest and hissed as he straightened and pulled out the intravenous lines, squeezing each one with a line clamp all the way to the end to wring out every drop. "He's my blood brother."

Standing slowly, (because how uncool would it be for the Antichrist to pass out after bleeding himself into a bucket) he caught the phone sliding from his lap, still lost in his own garbled thoughts. "This is my blood, shed for you... blah, blah, blah."

There used to be a little filter in his brain. Not anymore. Now he was like one of those giant dishes out in the middle of the desert downloading the universe on a high speed connection. It should have been confusing, but it wasn't. From his new perspective, he was all about the big picture, all the time, and everything was parabolic. There were no tangents. He didn't even try to censor himself anymore. Besides, it wasn't like he had anyone to talk to but himself. Not yet, anyway.

_Look at what's happened to me-eee, I can't believe it myself. Suddenly I'm up on top of the world. Should've been somebody else._

Music… or maybe muzak… and it wasn't just in his head this time.

He jerked around, trading one hand braced on the table for the other as he did a one-eighty, eyes upturned and darting from one overhead speaker to the next. The entire place was wired for sound. He found it hard to believe that old Carson, the benefactor of sorts (if dead and stuffed in a snow bank behind the tool shed could be considered an act of benevolence) was only listening for EVPs. Sure, it was possible there really were spirits in the wind and the trees.

Every Native American culture on the continent couldn't have been wrong, but between the speaker system and the network of satellite dishes strung across the hillside around the cabin, Sam suspected the guy subscribed to more conspiracy theories than The Lone Gunmen. But Sam hadn't even switched the power on to the surveillance system. He used his own mojo to get the call out, since there was no Verizon network this high up the Rockies, and the solar batteries hadn't charged enough to get more than basic heat and light in the place.

So, if he didn't do it...

Something tickled the tip of his index finger, and he snatched his hand back, falling into his chair with a thud and scrape across hardwood. Sitting put him in a much better position to spy the spider, tap-tapping its long legs across the table ledge. He huffed recognition. "I was wondering when you'd show up. Eight legs this time instead of six. Gotta say, I like this way better than the cockroach. That was way too Men in Black for me."

He shoved back up, because an Antichrist's work was never done. Sure, he was talking to a spider, but hey, at least this time he knew it wasn't DT's from demon blood withdrawal, not like the last time... but what was he supposed to have thought? The friggin' things were coming out of the walls and dancing. Dancing for fuck's sake! One spider he could deal with.

He smoothed the little bit of masking tape on the back of the phone so the 'Bobby' printed on it was clearly legible, then tossed it into the box next to 'Joshua,' 'Ellen,' and the rest. It was the newest, Bobby's blood probably not completely dried yet considering the wet fall they were having in South Dakota that year. No, that wasn't his doing. The weather, anyway. The murder was _all_ his doing. A work of art, that. Not that anyone would ever see it. At least, not anyone with a phone in Sam's box, which was pretty much everyone Sam and Dean had ever known.

_Believe it or not, I'm walking on air. I never thought I could feel so freee-eee-eeeeeee..._.

"That's your idea of a joke, isn't it? Haha." He took a hard look at the spider, two front legs waving back and forth like they were conducting the music. "You're a brown recluse, aren't you? So, why don't you... I dunno, reclude or something?" He wasn't sure that was even a word, but he wasn't above making up his own language. The Boy King's English should have its own dictionary. The spider ignored him and went on conducting its little symphony. "I thought I said I wanted a cat next time?"

He turned his back, important task at hand as it were, left the spider to toil and channel the Unheavenly Host any way it wanted. Sam knew they were there. He didn't really care what they were thinking. This was his show.

The bucket filled three small beakers, one for now and two for later, heparinized and packed into the freezer like popsicles. The first one went into a titration flask, set to a slow drip to match the trickle of greenish serum flowing from the condensing coil. Everything combined in a single beaker on top of a stir plate, magnetic stir bar spinning. There should probably have been a fume hood, but the open window worked just as well. It wasn't like he had to worry about his lungs.

He rolled down his sleeves and hit the speaker button on his bluetooth. "Guess who's coming to dinner?" Maybe Doc answered, but Sam didn't wait for his robotically translated "voice" to buzz in his ear. It was a rhetorical question anyway. He really did just like the sound of his own voice. Everyone did.

The spider answered, though, changing its tune, mid-chorus.

_Don't lose your head. Don't lose your head!_

Sam rolled his eyes. "Try again." And he squashed the spider with the heel of his hand, grimaced as he scraped the broken legs and segments onto the edge of the counter. "Next time, I want a friggin' cat."

--_**November 2013, Laredo, Texas**_

He needed fuel.

The gauge teased and danced above the red line, played that game for five miles. Dean knew he only had another seven, possibly eight miles out of her before she ran dry. He hated leaving it to the last minute, knew it was bad for the engine, but he wasn't in the mood for stopping. Had to keep moving, searching, needed to keep warm tires on the road. Storm blowing in from the Northwest, threatening to dump a couple feet over the Rockies by the weekend. Act of God or someone else? No telling, but Dean wasn't going to let it stop him.

When the gas station came into view, he sighed and begrudgingly pulled in.

He juiced the Impala then made his way into the tiny shop. It took him under a minute to zigzag through the aisles, pick up several items and dump the six pack, beef jerky and M&Ms onto the counter. He caught the manager peeking out of the office at him. Happened all the time. A guy like him, with his aversion to mirrors and... scars, tended to draw attention. Didn't help that he'd learned the hard way why Sam always bought his own shampoo instead of using whatever crap the motels (sometimes) left on the counter or in the soap dish. He hadn't stopped to cut his hair or undo any of the rest of the damage. Bobby barely even recognized him when Cas dropped him on the porch the day after Sam went missing.

His head jerked his chin toward the window, the Impala framed in the pane. "Thirty-five on pump three," he said with a nod to the rack behind the counter, "and a pack of Marlboros." Dirty habit. He knew, but his hands had a killer shimmy... nerves... and it was either smoke or take up origami. Hard as hell to fold a paper swan and drive at the same time.

"Reds?" the lady asked, bracing one hand on the counter. _All the better to reach the baseball bat underneath and club the freak with the blond highlights and piercings if he tried anything funny._

"Soft pack," Dean replied voice gruff and throat raw.

The buzzing light and bleep of the till gave him a headache.

He sniffed, wiped a lazy hand over his nose while he watched and waited for the girl to finish scanning the goods. She looked up at him after bagging each item. And each time Dean turned away, gazed out the shop window, looked to the floor, anything he could to avoid eye contact.

"That'll be forty, eighty-seven."

He cleared his throat and opened his wallet. He plunked two twenties and a one, surprised the attendant by dropping the change in the donation jar behind the register. Some kid needed a prosthetic hand to put a glove on so he could keep playing pitcher on his Little League team despite an unfortunate farm accident. "Cute kid."

The way she looked at him, he must've looked like the Grinch right after his heart grew three sizes and right before he carved the roast beast. "Yeah. Real sweetheart, too." She wasn't talking about the kid anymore, not if the tip forward and the squeezing together of her arms to fill out the cleavage were any indication. Unbelievable. Zero to hero in point five seconds.

He went through the motions, snicked and winked as he turned away. Yeah, in any other world. He caught her reflection in the window as he opened the door, noticed the look of disappointment for the microsecond he managed to ignore the face of the guy in front of him with the black eyeliner, piercings, and a loose strand of greasy blond hair falling across his eye. Friggin' ponytail holder never stayed tight enough.

He smoothed the loose strand back and tightened the elastic before getting into the car. Kinda like straightening the mirrors, anymore. The look was growing on him.

Like a tumor.

--

Dean took in the stratum of blue, orange, and white in the horizon. The white, snow-filled mountain took up a big chunk of the landscape and it looked like it was the end of the road for the Impala. As durable and reliable as his classic had been in the past and on many countless hunts, this would require something suited specifically for the terrain.

Dean parked the Impala, arched his back as he reached for his pack of smokes in his back pocket. He lit up a coffin nail, took a long drag while he sat in silence. One for the road, or path, whatever the case. He sat longer than he planned, ended up choking on a lungful of singed filter and chucked the butt. Maybe two for the road. Balancing the second smoke between his lips, he made his way around to the trunk. All the weapons he'd prepared for the hunt were packed in one bag. He clutched the handles, ran a calloused thumb over the rough, worn fabric before letting go. A fluttering mouth parted, and the cigarette wavered, stuck only by moisture to the bottom lip. An unsure hand found his necklace, clasped it tight in shaking fingers.

He stared aimlessly into the trunk, pulled out one of the neatly packed grenades, and rested it in the palm of his hand. The cold metal felt insubstantial, suddenly useless, as did everything else.  
He took a couple of drags on his cig before he pulled out the demon blade, tucked it into his waistband beside his gun.

Suddenly certain that everything he needed was on him, he cupped the necklace one last time to quiet the tremor in his hand, and slammed the trunk shut.

--_**November, 2013-Cabin**_

"Dean-oo. C'mere boy. Soup's on." Sam drummed his fingers against his thigh, feet dangling down off the rafter, his mind doing the thing it did best, which was wander off on any and all tangents. "Bring in the dog and put out the cat. Yakkity yak... shit." The beam was way too damned narrow for a guy his size, and it was wedged up against a very necessary piece of vasculature. He might not need all of his... faculties, but it was pretty hard for a eunuch to make a convincing alpha male, so he preferred to keep the original plumbing if at all possible. He'd have to settle for shifting from one cheek to the other and hoping Dean hurried his ass up.

Smelly Cat sat beside him, looking as prim and proper as the ugliest cat on the face of the planet could possibly look, scraggly tail twitching off the edge of the beam with taunting ease. "Laugh it up," Sam said to it. "You do remember what happened to the spider, don't you?" The cat looked up at him, unconcerned, black hair almost grey with grease and dust. It poked out in clumps all over Smelly's body instead of laying flat. Come to think of it, he'd never actually seen the cat grooming itself. Someone forgot to give the Host the memo on kitty hygiene. Still, he was more company than Sam'd had in ages. He was convincing, sure, but once people peeked behind his aviators and caught a glimpse of the yellow eyes, they never quite felt genuine anymore. If there was one thing he couldn't stand, it was being patronized. He went through a lot of minions.

"Bring in the dog and put out the cat..." he sang, off-key and with a definite hint of intent in his sideways leer.

He had to admit, hunting was so much easier when he was the quarry. Back when he was still Sam, in the days after the last seal broke (well, after he broke it) and naive enough to think he could get Lucifer out of his Dean suit without any dire consequences, he'd had to chase his brother down for a good three years. Now that Dean was hunting him, well, he had to wonder why they hadn't used themselves as bait more often.

Seriously. Dean was out there, busting his ass trudging through snow drifts and scoping out the perimeter (for all the good it would do him), and the most work Sam had to do was get up here. He was a little embarrassed at how long it'd taken him to shimmy up there. The powers of all four horsemen at his disposal, and not one of the fuckers could fly.

Anyway, that accomplished, all he had to do now was wait for Dean to walk into his trap and pick through his brain for more cheesy jingles and bad song lyrics to keep himself from going insane with boredom in the meanwhile. It wasn't actually all that easy. He hadn't noticed until then just how much of his familiarity with both cheese and music were directly attributable to Dean. All the stuff crammed in his head, everything a good little Antichrist needed and then some, and the only parts that came with a soundtrack were the Dean parts. And the freshest of those memories weren't exactly whistling Dixie. Sam was pretty sure his head should have exploded by now from the constant banging of timpani and crashing cymbals, rumbling bass violin.

He shifted again, shunting the blood flow down the other half of his body, and decided the whole thing would be a lot easier to deal with if he'd been made a little more supernatural and a little less human.

Dean was taking long enough. Probably outside writing his name in the snow, claiming his prize, his Sammy. But he had it backwards. Sam wasn't Dean's. Dean was Sam's. And he would eventually get that through his thick skull... if it took forever. Actually, part of Sam hoped it would take that long. That would be fun.

--

Dean checked the compass, made sure he was facing the right direction. There were no signs to where he was headed, no roads or maps, guiding the way. Not that it mattered. What kind of hunter let a little lack of civilization or highway stop him?

He inhaled on the cig 'til his lungs felt the burn, squatted to the snow and knocked the cherry off before placing it into his pocket. Straddling the snowmobile, he mounted and turned the key in the ignition, wishing for the dozenth time that he'd bartered for the helmet to go with it. Frostbite he could deal with, but the friggin' hair jerking out of his ponytail and tangling around his lip piercing was starting to get on his nerves. He supposed he could take the stud out, but it still felt like it wasn't his to touch. Like changing someone else's underwear. Not that Lucifer ever actually wore underwear.

He shuddered, not only from the cold, throttled the gas, and roared over mounds of fresh powder, each time silently hoping the end of the trail was just over the next one.

--

Forty five minutes in, he finally saw it. Looked almost quaint, homey, silhouetted against the mountainside with just a soft firelight glow in the windows. He slowed the snowmobile to a stop, dismounted and left it, continuing forward on foot about a quarter of a mile, his boots crunching deep into the snow.

After three laps around the property on foot, he'd found nothing except a dismantled Mule in the tool shed hooked up to a trailer with one worn tire and one cheap donut spare. As far as he could tell, there was no way into the cabin except through the front door, and there was no doubt in his mind Sam knew he was coming. But Dean hadn't come all that way to back down.

Of course. The door.

-- _**July, 2009-- Two Months in Solitary... and counting...**_

"Do not open the door."

Dean's hand froze on the knob, head swiveling from shoulder to shoulder, craned toward the ceiling, around and as far behind as it could reach, his neck spindly and weak from months hanging, hopeless and waiting. "Cas?"

"Do not open the door."

"Have t..." A hard swallow did nothing but scrape dry membranes together, didn't free his voice at all, hoarse and crackling. "Have to, Cas, I have to. Have to."

"It is the only place you're safe."

Maybe Dean was already a few sodders short of a mother board, but the familiar voice booming out of the darkness and apparently unattached to anything else really didn't help him forget how freaked the fuck out he was. He wasn't even trying to hide it anymore. Not like anyone could see him. "Have to," he repeated. He did. He had to, before his hands got any clammier and he couldn't turn the knob or his heart just vibrated out of his throat and blew it off the hinges.

"Safe... safe... safe..."

Dean wasn't sure if Castiel spoke again or if it was just the echo coming back around. He shivered in the dark, the only light a portal the size of his middle finger in the far wall and the soft glow from under the door. He'd already peeked through the hole and didn't plan to do it again if he could help it. Cloverfield was nauseating, but first person camera from inside his own head made him throw up in the corner of his mind...

_scattered pictures..._

Fuck, he had to be insane if a puddle of puke made him think of Barbara Streisand.

"How is locked behind an imaginary door safe?" he asked.

Castiel's voice echoed like Dean was locked in a sixty foot grain silo instead of crammed in a twelve by twelve shipping crate full of memories and a cooling pool of vomit. "Your body is your temple."

Dean laughed, a clawing bubble of a noise that forced its way up his throat and out. "And love is a battlefield, asshole. Let me out."

"We need you there."

Shuddering breath and slow slide down the door. "Fine, then, at least tell me... where is here?"

"The seat of your soul."

"What? Like the throne room? 'Cuz I don't actually see a seat. Porcelain or gold, you know, I'm really not that picky where I park my... soul." _Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck_.

"God created the sanctuary. You built the church."

"Figures." After a moment of only rasping breath and gradually crescendoing heartbeats, he added, "At least I could sleep through church. This place friggin' crackles like it's got a bad case of static cling."

Silence. Of course, Castiel didn't understand. Or he left. _Don't you dare leave me here!_ Dean lurched forward, like there was somewhere he could go if he wanted to give chase. "Cas!"

"I'm still here."

"But you're leaving." The darkness grew heavier with the certainty.

"Yes. Lucifer will hear me."

"Take me with you."

"If you leave here, then I cannot protect you. Lucifer's possession will be complete, and you will not be able to find out his plan."

"How am I supposed to know his plan? I'm not supposed to open the door, remember? It's not like we chat. I can..." His gorge rose just remembering his one peek through the portal at Lucifer the Ride. "I can sorta see what he's doing, but unless you wanna know which hand he uses to..."

"He has allies in Heaven. It is... not safe for me to maintain this channel of communication, but they will contact him, and when they do, you will know."

"How?"

"Lucifer is an angel. Fallen, but still an angel. You are his vessel. You can hear me. You will hear them."

"But I couldn't before."

"You were damaged before. Now you are whole." A moment of silence except for the snap and crackle of the air closing in around him. "You will find what you need there."

"And Sam?"

"He… he has your back."

Dean stiffened, fingernails clawing deep into the wood beneath him as the room shook, the familiar thud, thud, thud of heavy footsteps behind the door. He waited for them to pass, his breath like bellows in his ears despite barely moving in his chest, and yet the silence left in their wake proved harder to elude. It clamped over him, black spots inching along the perimeter of his vision in counterpoint to the clanging echo. "Some guardian angel you are," he said, more to hear his voice bounce off the walls he couldn't see than to elicit a response.

"Dean, you are not alone." A whisper, trailing off in lieu of a salutation, and the flutter of angel's wings without the breeze.

"What's that?... " Sarcasm thick in his throat. "If I build it, they will come?"

Nothing.

Well, it was better than "Rosebud" anyway.

Not as good as "Redrum" but the door stayed closed.

And he waited. He waited a very long time. Just him and the door.

--_**November, 2013-Cabin**_

"Here, Deanie, Deanie. C'mon, kitty cat. Sammy's got a nice new collar for you." He banged the catchpole against his sleeping foot, caught the glint of the hypodermic needle protruding from the end.

_There is just one moon and one golden sun..._

Sam was so used to random anthems booming out of the silence, he almost started singing along before he realized that was his cue. He leaned forward as far as he could, eyes focused on the door below.

_... and a smile means friendship to everyone. _

The door opened, and across the room a sandbag fell from its perch. It jerked the clothesline through the pulley system along the beams with a zip-whirr until it thudded to the floor as the door jerked open the rest of the way, splintering against the wall of the cabin.

_There's so much that we share, that it's time we're aware..."_

--

Dean didn't come with the door, but he fired off two shots in the direction of the fallen sandbag before creeping across the threshold, eyes fixed on the darkest corner where the "assailant" was slumped.

_It's a small world after all..._

He glanced up just as Sam slid the catchpole over his head.

_It's a small world after all. _

--

Hot, searing, pulsating pain. He bit down on his tongue, sunk his teeth deep into soft tissue. The broken flesh sprayed blood, coating his gums, and soon his mouth was full of the sickly copper tang. It clogged his throat. He gagged and clawed at his throat, grappling for any kind of finger hold but there was none to find.

Something pierced the skin at the back of his neck, just below the noose, and drove deep, scraped against backbone and tore through cartilage discs. Arching and writhing, fingernails clawing at steel cable, an acid boiled into the puncture and burned its way down his spine, lava pooling all the way in his toes.

The seizure rose from the bottom up, a fire up a gasoline-soaked wick, grabbed him and shook him until his teeth ground in his jaw, hard, fast and unyielding. His scream was just a gurgle, blood bubbling in his nose before he cracked, broke inside his skin, and everything slipped mercifully away.

--_**November, 2013-Cabin**_

"Oh, way to go."

Sam glanced up into the open refrigerator where Dean had slammed into it as he staggered backward out the door, thrashing against Sam's snare. Doc Benton glared at him, eyes glassy, still spinning on the eye hook from the force of the collision.

"What are you looking at?"

"You weren't supposed to kill him," the electronic voice droned into his ear via the antenna on top of the fridge.

"I guess I don't know my own strength." Sam rolled his brother over, the snow crunching underneath him where he'd fallen off the porch. He disengaged the catchpole, watched the hypodermic needle slide out halfway and break off, still buried in the back of Dean's neck. "Anyway, I didn't think it would be possible." Jerking the rest of the needle out with a great deal more force than he'd expected, he added, "He got the full dose of serum."

"Yes. Once he's fully perfused, he'll be, for all intents and purposes, immortal, like you. However, the serum requires a beating heart to deliver it through the bloodstream to all the tissues.

"Well, now, that would've been useful to know _before_ I killed him." Sam did a quick check, searching for a carotid pulse in the ruined black and blue flesh of Dean's throat, but he already knew there wasn't one. He'd felt the crack through the pole when the neck snapped, recognized the lifeless glare in Dean's eyes. True, he really didn't know his own strength, but he hadn't counted on Dean weighing a good thirty pounds less than he had the last time he saw him. The effects of the last year were all too apparent as Sam crouched beside the shrunken body, a hipbone sharp against his thigh. "I got it covered," he said, something cold hollowing out inside his gut. If a beating heart was all he needed, then a beating heart he could manage.

It was almost too easy to depress the sternum, so little fat between the tissues underneath. He imagined the heart muscle in the palm of his hand, just the other side of gaunt, stretched skin. The first five or ten compressions just pushed the body deeper into the indentation in the snow until the head tipped forward at an awkward angle, and Sam had to stop and heave him up onto the porch. He butted up against the refrigerator before Sam got him laid out flat, and Doc started another slow spin around on his hook from the vibration.

Sam tipped Dean's head back and puffed into his mouth, trying to gauge how much blood he was moving by the slow change in skin color from blue to pale gray to pinkish. A rib broke on the third set of compressions close enough to the sternum that Sam could feel the scrape, scrape of bone against bone on every beat. It occurred to him that it might poke through the skin, and the image bothered him more than he figured it should. It made his teeth grind against each other and his jaw throb, and he suddenly felt dirty, like he was elbow deep in raw sewage looking for silverware. At some point, he closed his eyes, his own heartbeat fast and loud in his ears. He kept on, pounding and huffing, huffing and pounding until sweat stained his shirt and steam curled out of his open collar.

"That's got it."

He didn't hear. Pounding and huffing, huffing and pounding.

--_**June, 2010-One year in Solitary and counting**_

Being possessed by Lucifer wasn't the worst thing that ever happened to Dean. Not even close. Hell, after dragging his ass through eight months of post-Hell trauma with the weight of the world growing exponentially across his shoulders, he didn't feel helpless so much as weightless. Ironic? Maybe, but in his experience, life was like that.

He didn't know what he'd been expecting. A year or so ago, before that little chat with Casey, Lucifer had been to a hunter what the monster under the bed was to most every other guy. Even after that, the clear and present danger looming on a horizon of broken seals and dead angels, the Lord of Hell was still just smoke and mirrors, the big plan to deal with him being never to meet him in person.

Not the best plan.

And so there he was, hitched to the tail of one comet Lucifer, best seat in the place to find out what the dude was up to, worst one for doing a damned thing about it. And alone.

Okay, so maybe it was the worst thing that ever happened to him. He was a terrible conversationalist, and unless he answered himself, anything he said sounded like prayer. He didn't pray.

He also really didn't know when to shut up.

Instead, he made lists. The back of his brain was a dingy motel room with post-it notes and newspaper clippings tacked across it from frontal to occipital lobe. Or was it temporal to temporal? Not like Dean ever planned a career in brain surgery. But who was he kidding? The whole collage amounted to a lot of nothing. A year peeking out the hole in the wall and keeping an ear to the door, he still didn't know what Lucifer was up to.

At least the puddle in the corner had dried up awhile back.

Lucifer in a meat suit was just a guy. A guy Dean would probably call Lucy with a slug to the shoulder and a quirk of the brow, if, you know, they were on speaking terms, which they were not. If they were, then Dean could tell him to keep his hands, er, _Dean's_ hands off the merchandise. He would not, instead, be spending a couple of hours every morning ogling himself in a mirror and wondering how it was possible to know it was his face and still not recognize it.

He should've known Lucifer wouldn't be your ordinary, run-of-the-mill fallen angel. He'd been in Hell since before Christ. He obviously never got the memo about how to wear a meat suit in a way that didn't make people stand back and say, "Is that guy for real?"

Castiel had it down. Even fooled Jimmy's wife.

Anna? Smoking hot babe, no question about it.

Anna did her hair and makeup. Castiel wasn't wearing Go-Go boots under that trench coat. Those were two angels who knew how to blend in.

So, why the Hell Lucifer insisted on growing out Dean's hair (don't even ask about the blond highlights) and having eyeliner tattooed on, was beyond Dean. He could deal with all that, even when the hair got long enough that he had to tie it back in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. Dean even kinda dug the all black clothing. Not his usual t-shirt and leather jacket, but at least it wasn't, like, tie-dyed or something. He wasn't sure if it was supposed to be ninja or Jedi, and he didn't stay topside long enough to find out where a dude even bought clothes like that. Not that he ever considered buying them for himself.

He would have been afraid to change his own clothes, anymore-- probably snag one of the piercings.

Oh yeah, he was pierced, too-- both ears, cartilage and lobe, (some weird cufflinkie thing with a chain between them), his right eyebrow and lower lip, and probably a few places he didn't want to know about.

Dean wasn't surprised he turned heads in that getup. He _was_ a little surprised that Lucifer didn't really turn away. Not from anyone. Guy was an attention whore of the highest grade, emphasis on the whore. Even Dean had to stop and ask, "Oh God, are we having sex _again_?"

Dean had a limit. Who knew? He did. Now.

Haunting his own brain gave him plenty of time for introspection. He knew a lot of things about himself he never had before, including the part where he wasn't really... well, himself. Or alone. The part where he could talk to himself and find out things he had no business knowing. He liked to call it, getting in touch with his feminine side.

Thank fuck that was just between him and… him.

Time didn't have much meaning in inner space, so it was hard to say exactly how long it took Dean to realize he wasn't alone in there. He actually spent the first hours, weeks, or days, (hard to say) thinking Lucy had himself a henchman that stayed just out of sight. Dean never saw him, but he heard him, annoying little kiss ass, always, "Yes, Sir," and, "Whatever you say." "Yes, love the jacket. No, not too much heel on the boots." Dude had no backbone whatsoever.

He should've picked up on it earlier, except Dean had never cared to listen to recordings of himself, not since that time Sammy recorded him singing REO in the shower. It was just creepy knowing it was him on the tape and still not sounding anything like himself. Too bad he couldn't turn off that annoying sycophantic little voice in his head when he realized it was his own.

Sort of.

Turned out, Alistair wasn't being metaphorical when he'd said Dean had left a part of himself in Hell. He had. The little part of himself that Castiel had tried to contact that first day back when he'd spoken and nearly burst Dean's ear drums. The little part of Jimmy Novak that let angels speak with him. Castiel hadn't been wrong. Dean was one of those people, those special people. He'd just left the special part in Hell. Or he'd had it torn out and apparently presented to Lucifer as a gift. For all Dean knew, they were bosom buddies in Hell, Dean's feminine side and the Lord of the Underworld.

Dean didn't remember any of it.

And he didn't plan to. Dean, the kickass hunter, stayed locked in his dingy motel headspace, and ass-kissing angel speak Dean communed with Lucifer and all of Lucifer's trysts, shared the details through the door. Angel speak Dean was a total gossip. Dean rarely answered, afraid who else might hear, but he kept his ear pressed to the door. Two Deans were better than one Dean alone, even if one was Lucifer's bitch.

Besides, it was the only way he had of knowing Sam was still out there fighting the good fight on Dean's behalf.

Most of the time, the news was less than newsworthy. They were in Omaha or Giddings. They got a new tattoo or a piercing. Fucked a blonde… or a blond. Nothing Dean could use, still he hung on every word.

Dean supposed he'd have to reconcile with his other half someday, so long as there was no weird, like, _insertion_ or something, because if there was, Dean was inserting himself into his other half, and not the other way around. And only through the belly button, because… okay, yeah, he wasn't in any hurry to get _that_ in touch with his feminine side.

He didn't even really like his other half that much, except the angels only spoke to his other self. Cas only spoke to his other self. His other self knew what was going on, and Dean had no clue. He was just a blinking cursor on a monitor. The other Dean was the central unit. Sure it was still him, but Dean was never any good at sitting the bench. He wasn't the eleventh man for fuck's sake. He was the freaking quarterback.

Or at least he used to be.

And then there were notes under the door. Archaic runes and symbols scribbled in… lip liner? On little squares of toilet paper. (His life was in the crapper, and it turned out his inner self was literal to a fault.) Dean didn't know what else to do with them other than stick them to the wall with the rest of his useless collage. Only they wouldn't stay up just anywhere, no matter how many pushpins with little skulls on them he used to fasten them to the imaginary corkboard. By the time he gave up trying to put them up, the entire floor of his room was covered with the things and reminded him of those stupid commercials with the bears in the woods. Ah, the simple life, when things like the lint-factor of toilet paper actually mattered.

He barely looked at the square that changed it all. He'd tried to commit the rest to memory on the off chance he got out of that hole and needed to recount it to someone who could actually interpret the message, but by then they were all looking pretty much the same. On the day in question, he felt it slip under the door, butting up against his fingertips, the punctuation on a message that was too short and ended too abruptly. "Sam's taking out Lucifer's generals. Lucy's pissed."

Dean couldn't stop himself. "Sam? What about Sam? How does he know…?" His voice caught in his throat and died with a squeak, the door to his room opening a fraction of an inch before he could remember his cover and slam it shut, fingers sweaty and slick around the knob. It'd been so long since he'd spoken, he'd almost forgotten crawling through the dark hallways of his mind to get there, worried just the pant, pant of his own breath was enough to give him away, Lucifer's steady footsteps always just behind him and tirelessly searching.

One mention of Sam, and Dean practically started banging his tin cup against the bars.

Too late to take it back, Dean lunged for the doorknob, pulled it shut with the quietest snick he could muster in his haste, and hung there, dangling with all his weight to keep it shut while the floor shook beneath him with Lucifer's approaching footsteps. Something jabbed him in the hip, and a skeleton key as thick as his thumb fell from his pocket with a clatter. He didn't know where it came from, but he didn't know where the walls or floors came from either. Only after he feverishly shoved it into the lock, his forearms straining and cording with the effort of moving the rusted tumblers, did he realize it could very well have been his thumb, or someone else's. White bone, worn smooth and polished like wood, splintered into long shards, hollow in the middle where the marrow used to be, and occluded the keyhole completely. Like all good tricks, it only worked once, but work it did, and Lucifer's footsteps faded once more, leaving Dean panting against the door and thinking he'd have to think of something else the next time.

Or make sure there wasn't a next time.

Sweat trickled into his eye, and when he raised his hand to brush it away, the latest message was stuck to the heel of his hand, an irony he would've found amusing if he wasn't afraid to laugh. He shook it loose like so much dusty spider web and blew it into the corner with a huff of breath.

It never landed.

Instead, the square of tissue caught an updraft from somewhere, flitted up into the air, and when it did, the symbol on the front of it started to glow, a faint shimmer tracing the outline as shaky and slow as a child with a fat crayon trying to spell out his name. Dean was so mesmerized by the show, he didn't notice the other squares rising from the floor, one at a time, until the second joined with the first, fusing together as though the perforations had never been broken. As Dean watched, breathless, the entire carpet of discarded messages rose and swirled around him, one at a time lighting up and spinning to the center of the vortex to join with the lengthening chain until the last one tacked onto the end, a toilet paper ticker tape in some language Dean didn't understand, and fixed itself to the wall.

Talk about close encounters of the third kind.

_**November 2013-Cabin**_

"You've got it."

"Huh..." Sam stopped, hair covering both his eyes, clothes in disarray, but stock still. "How do you know?"

"Look at his eyes."

Sam stood, straightening both legs under himself simultaneously, like he was lifted by the scruff of his neck, arms loose at his sides. Fully upright, he dropped his chin and looked down at Dean.

Dean's eyes were open, the pupils and irises completely white, just a shade lighter than the rest of his eyeball so they looked almost glowing.

"Congratulations, Dr. Frankenstein. It's alive. Give him a chance to warm up and get a few key cellular systems up and running. He'll be doing the monster mash in no time."

"Good." Sam bent at the waist and snagged the back of Dean's jacket collar, stood again, Dean's body bending sideways obscenely before his legs slid across the wood and righted themselves. "And don't call him a monster." He slammed the refrigerator door shut and didn't leave the bungee cord off this time.

--

_**May, 2009--St. Mary's  
**_  
"So what you're saying is… Lucifer's not letting Dean out of his sight."

"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."

Sam swallowed. "Yeah, that's what I thought." Lucifer and Dean were about as close as they could get right then. "So, I guess we're pretty much screwed at this point."

"I would not say that."

"Why?" Sam huffed. "Is 'screwed' not in the Good Angel's dictionary of Approved Human Speak?"

Castiel turned away, squinted into the sky, watchful, his shadow falling over Sam the way Dean's always had until now. "I have great faith in your brother, Sam."

An angel of the Lord believed in Dean-- _Sam's_ Dean. If he thought Castiel was capable of accusation, Sam would've considered himself the accused. Instead, he just felt nauseous.

"Me, too." Wherever he was, Dean needed all the faith he could get.

"Yes, Sam," Castiel's hand tightened around Sam's shoulder and lifted him to standing, held him suspended inches above the ground long enough to find his feet and balance over them, "I have faith in you, too."

Sam might as well have taken a hit to the solar plexus the way the air rushed out of him just then, replaced with something thick and viscous that wouldn't move out of the way until he spoke. He wanted to say Castiel misunderstood. Instead, he asked, "Why?"

"Because Dean does, and Dean is depending on you... On us." He turned, a slow revolution around a heel that left a perfect circle scraped into the dirt, and placed a hand on each of Sam's shoulders. "Do you?"

"Do I what? Believe?" He cleared his throat, eyes dropping to the ground. What was left to believe in when everything of myth and legend had already revealed itself to be real and not at all what he'd expected? "I... want to." But then, want had never gotten him anything besides a rap as a selfish bastard trailing a long comet tail of wrong decisions in his wake.

"Faith is believing what you cannot see and knowing when you cannot know. Sometimes the only veil is the illusion of _dis_illusionment." Something radiated through them like bass through a subwoofer, only hotter, tracking along every nerve fiber in Sam's body, gentle but steadily growing. Castiel's fingers tightened on Sam's shoulders, each finger the tine on a tuning fork vibrating at some ultra low frequency he could feel in the roots of his teeth. He felt himself falling, curling in on himself, and yet he stood, Castiel's clear blue eyes squinting into his face, hands searing into flesh and deeper.

"Cas...?" he choked, reaching out. His fingers found Castiel's elbows, thumbs caught in the crooks and the rest vice-tight around the knobs of bone, neither prying nor clinging, his entire body a spasm that opened his jaw and rolled his eyes up into his skull. The frequency of the vibration climbed higher and higher, for a second or two exactly like cicadas calling in the treetops before it amped into something unbearable and deafening.

"God needs you, Sam." Castiel's voice was both a damper and a reprieve that Sam used to draw in a ragged breath.

The reprieve ended with the sentence.

"Nyaaaaaaah!" A heart attack couldn't have been less pleasant. As his mouth opened to scream, he tasted blood on his tongue, a slow drip from his nose. Red clouded his vision and garbled the sound in his ears. Looking down, he found his palms bleeding, dark rivulets cascading along the veins in his arms and dripping from his fingertips. Black blood. The thick stench of rotting flesh coiled in his sinuses until he gagged around it... the same way he'd first gagged on it going down. He didn't remember when he stopped choking it down and started hungering for it.

He wasn't hungry now.

The initial shock and fear burned away, and Sam stopped fighting.

Castiel's grip tightened. Sam mirrored it, palms to the angel's elbows, holding on for dear life, not ashamed to be held up. Green eyes met blue and found a question still looming, unanswered. "Sam?"

He knew the answer, and for once, knew it was the right one. "Just-just do it."

Castiel did.

--_**November, 2013-Cabin  
**_  
_"No one turns his back on Heaven, Dean. The door is open. There is no guarantee it will stay that way."_

_"C'mon, Cas. You're supposed to be the one harping about faith. Where's yours? Have I let you down yet?"_

_"It's not my faith in you that matters."_

_"It's just you and me here. What else is there?"_

_"Just because you can't see does not mean there is no one else..."_

_"I have to do this."_

_"I know." Castiel placed a hand on Dean's shoulder, eyes downcast, and when Dean tipped forward, still weak, wearing his skin like a hand me down, Castiel held him up. "Good journey. Trust in yourself, and you will not fail."_

_Dean scoffed. "What is that? New Revelation for a Post-Apocalyptic World?"_

_"Just the truth. It's all there is now." A hand pressed too firmly over Dean's heart. Electricity sparked through the metal of his amulet and seized his whole body, clenched from the inside out as if in a giant fist._

**  
**--

_He's got the whole world in his hand...  
_  
Sam was used to blood curdling screams and cries for mercy. He just wasn't used to hearing them when he was awake, used to leaving them behind in whatever dreams gripped him from the depths of wherever he was dragged when he let himself stop fighting long enough to rest. Now they didn't fade. The deafening sound pulsating through his ears got louder until he ran out of breath. Only then, lungs heaving and aching for air, did he realize the screams were his own.

_He's got the whole wide world in his hand...  
_  
And he had backup singers.

--

"Happy... ugh..." Sam cleared his throat. For some reason he felt like a racehorse that'd had its wind broken running sprints too early in its training, could taste iron on the back of his tongue. _Fucking nightmares._ How he managed to fall asleep while waiting for Dean to wake up was beyond him. The Antichrist should be able to wean himself off sleep or at least figure out how to not wake up screaming. He didn't spend the last six months plotting to get Dean under his thumb to have his credibility as a supervillain ruined on the first day. He'd barely tipped the first domino; he couldn't be foiled by the first zigzag.

He leaned over the body on the counter, swallowed his hoarseness and tried again. "Happy Birthday." Sam pulled up each of Dean's eyelids, one after the other, watching him squint and turn his head reflexively away each time, a sure sign he was waking up. "Today you're a new man. Or something like it." Sam scrubbed at his burning eyes, the corners crusty. "Ya scream like a girl, though. Woke us both up with that little outburst. Drama Queen." So, it was a lie. Wasn't the worst thing he'd done. Not by far.

Dean's throat bobbed and constricted before his mouth opened, a dry crackle like cellophane.

"You sound a little parched. I have just the thing for that."

Dean's eyes fluttered open as Sam pressed a beaker to his lips, but they slammed shut again. Despite the dull ambient light from the nearly extinguished fire, he squinted until the lines at his temples grew deep. It was probably best he didn't see the concoction dribbling over his lips, thick, black, and bubbling like tar. Sam had no idea what it tasted like, but it didn't take a lot of imagination, especially when Dean gagged and jerked away, spluttering. Half the serum spilled down his chin before Sam grabbed him by the jaw, thumb pressing into the hollow under his tongue. "Drink it."

Dean glared up at him, his eyes opaque white, body writhing, but Sam pried his mouth open. When the serum started to foam and sputter out of his nose, Dean swallowed, choking and gasping until the beaker was empty. Sam wiped the spill away with the corner of the sheet (tablecloth, since the kitchen counter worked better for this than the cot in the back.) "Good boy."

Dean made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a cough, his lips miming a question he probably didn't want the answer to.

"Don't try to talk. It'll take awhile for the tissue damage in your throat to repair itself."

Dean, of course, spoke. "What'd you do to me?"

Sam rolled his eyes at the gravelly raw scrape of a voice. "Or you know, ignore my advice altogether. Always was your M.O."

Dean did a passing show of righteous indignation, clenching his jaw more tightly than he should have been able, given the damage to the soft tissues around his neck. When he spoke, it was with a hiss, flecks of foam in the corners of his lips. "I said... what'd... what'd you do?"

They both jolted when the speakers in the eaves crackled and popped to life.

_And now I am. I'm born again. I've been redeemed by the blood of the lamb._

Sam chuckled. "More like black sheep than lamb, but yeah, I guess that pretty much sums it up." He caught the way Dean's eyes darted to the rafters and around the room, searching for the source of the music.

"Ah, old man Carson was wired for just about everything. He was heavy into EVPs, had his solar panels working double duty as radio antennas. He was also tracking just about every satellite in the sky and a few he only expected were there. Regular conspiracy theorist." He paused appreciatively. "Gotta hand it to the guy. He was ready for the apocalypse." He looked out the window where snow had started to fall as slowly as if it was only bits of fog that were too heavy to stay afloat. No hurry at all. "Had to be a lot of trouble. He was probably disappointed it didn't happen." An accusing glance.

He jammed a hypodermic needle into Dean's thigh, ignoring when Dean jerked on the table with a grunt. Drawing it back, he eyed the syringe against one of the overhead lights, examining the tissue and fluid inside for color and texture. "So, anyway, I'm kinda interfering with whatever signals this place is picking up on. Either me or whatever tagalongs I've got with me." Setting the syringe on the counter, he braced his forearms on the table, leaning over Dean like a mortician over a corpse. "Nothing gets by me. I'm like a black hole." He pressed into the bruised flesh around Dean's Adam's apple, not sure what he was looking for, but every experiment needed a baseline. "Do you know that somewhere in the world there's always a song playing exactly what you're thinking?" He pretended to wait for an answer but wasn't surprised when Dean started back blankly. "Yeah, well, neither did I. Turns out the world is one giant high school band rehearsal room, and the conductor has left the podium. Pity the aliens scouring the universe for signs of civilization."

Dean swallowed, squinting. "I said..."

"Shhh." Sam jabbed his thumb under Dean's jaw until his mouth snapped shut. "I heard you the first time. Y'know, I could ask you the same question. Lucifer rode you hard. You shouldn't have survived that. No. I was supposed to take out Lucifer, and your little angel was supposed to take you off to wherever it is righteous men go. Final reward. No more worries or cares. No more cursed little brother to drag you down. That was my gift to you. My sssssssacrificccccccce," he hissed. "And yet," a dramatic gesture, somewhere between jazz hands and abracadabra, "here you are." He leaned in, nose to nose, wondering if he could inflict halitosis on himself just to up the level of invasiveness. "What'd _you_ do, Dean?"

Dean's eyes darted away.

"I can see that's a touchy subject." Sam snorted. "Tell you what. This is a lot to... digest. Go back to sleep. Details can wait."

Sam had no doubt Dean would've argued the point further, but he was already asleep. Angels weren't the only ones with the magic touch.

_I've been saved by the great I Am..._

"I'm gonna kill that fucking cat." He glanced around the cabin, already bored like the kid who got up at four a.m. to open Christmas presents and passed out under the tree by six. His loft was calling, the nightmare ridden nap from earlier not enough to override years of jet-lagging exhaustion. "In the morning, I'm gonna kill that fucking cat."

Tomorrow was going to be a beautiful day.

He waited for an interjection from above, but he got no rousing "Annie" snippet. Maybe the cat was fearing for its nine lives. Most likely yacking up a hairball under the bed.

With a stretch and a yawn, he was up the ladder and passed out face-first on his cot. As an afterthought, he snapped his mouth firmly shut. The average person swallows three spiders in a lifetime by sleeping with his mouth open. Sam was more worried about cockroaches.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** Don't own. No harm intended. Fair use only.

--_**August, 2009-- San Dimas, California.**_

It all went down at the Circle K. Or it would've if that particular Circle K hadn't been bought out by Exxon. And the guy cowering in the phone booth was no Rufus come to mentor his Bill and Ted, just some poor schmuck who got a front row seat to the demise of an Angel of God at the hands of Sam and Castiel. The feat didn't involve any criss-crossing jumps through the space time continuum, but it might as well have for all Sam could believe it. He felt a lot less like a Wyld Stallyn and lot more like an Urkel when he stumbled to his knees and croaked, "Did I... Did I do that?"

"You did." Castiel was either at a loss for words or just, well... Cas. Sam couldn't tell. If the angel's expression changed at all as he stood in the blackened shadow on the pavement where Zachariah met his demise, Sam couldn't see it, his own vision still clouded and prickling at the edges.

"But..."

"I thought only an angel could kill an angel," Bobby finished, offering a hand to heave Sam off the blacktop.

"Or a man with angel in his blood."

"Angel?" Sam choked on the word, or maybe he choked on something else and the word just scraped its way past.

Castiel turned away from the scarred ground and gazed beyond them. Power lines snapped and sparked in a widening arc with Sam the compass point in the center as the city went dark around them.

"Azazel was only a demon after he fell, Sam. Hell changed him at a base level, as it does everything that enters, but the demon is only a taint, a poison, not a complete reconstruction. His blood was both angel and demon, and therefore, so are you."

"But you..." Sam stuttered, unsure if cleansed or purified were the appropriate words. "You pulled it out. The blood. I thought..."

"I undid what you did to pollute yourself. I did not change what you are. Only God can remake you in his image... if that is His will."

As the darkness closed in around them, Sam's eyes fell to his hands, his fingertips still glowing and twitching with the latent energy of whatever power had surged through him just minutes ago. "So that was... angel power?" Still agape and more than a little unsteady on his feet. "When you taught me the meditation, did you know that's what I was tapping?"

"I..." Castiel's chin dropped into his chest. "I hoped."

"You hoped?!" Bobby seethed, shoving his Jacques seed cap down tighter over his brow after making a half-hearted gesture to throw the thing at Castiel and thinking better of it. "You taught the kid some cockamamie Harry Potter hocus pocus, dragged us halfway across the country because he talked in his sleep, and then got us into a showdown with one of Lucifer's Generals because you... had a hunch?"

"In a manner of speaking," Castiel conceded.

Bobby spat in the dirt, saliva and blood, because none of them escaped unscathed, well, except the dude in the phone booth, and hitched up his jeans. "Yeah, well, just so we're clear."

"Clear?" Sam was still watching static charges jump from fingertip to fingertip when he realized Bobby and Castiel were already making their way back to the truck without him. He swatted his hands against his jeans like he was knocking off so much angelic dust and scrambled to catch up. "We are most definitely not clear. I talked in my sleep? That's how we ended up in San Dimas? What did I say?"

"Zachariah's in San Dimas." Castiel's frustrating brevity was going to get him a punch in the face one of these days. Especially now that Sam knew he might actually be able to make it hurt.

"Fine, then, who told _me_ that?"

"Dean."

Sam missed the door handle and cracked his forehead against the window. Instead of pressing his hand to the knot that caused, he rubbed the back of his head, the only real hurt being that no one actually cuffed him there. "Dean. Of course." He hadn't actually forgotten that Dean didn't have his back on this one. There might even have been a moment when his fingers started sparking and that power surged through him, cannon ball through a bubble wand, when he was glad Dean wasn't there to see. Somehow tapping into something bigger than Heaven or Hell made him feel like a preschooler hiding wet bed sheets in the bottom of the hamper. No way could he shake the feeling of cold and clammy that meant Dean wasn't there while he stumbled through the dark. "Does Dean know he told me that?"

"No. You only spoke with his subconscious."

"Great," Sam grumbled. "Spent the last four years trying to get Dean to talk to me, and when he does, neither one of us thinks to turn on the video camera." He slid into the cab, long legs banging the bottom of the glove compartment, because it was Bobby's truck, and Bobby's bench seat, and Bobby's shorter legs trying to reach the pedals. "I don't suppose Dean's subconscious told my subconscious where Lucifer is."

"What would you do if you knew?"

Sam bumped shoulders with Castiel harder than he could dismiss as accidental. It wasn't like he didn't know exactly how much room he had on the seat with Castiel straddling the stick shift, but he still wasn't quite perturbed enough to hit the angel with intent. He was also still shaky enough to have no real strength other than his own weight. "What do you think I'd do? I'd go after him."

Castiel folded the tails of his coat against his knees so the shifter was more accessible as Bobby slid in beside him. "Then, no. He did not say."

Bobby didn't pretend his flask was full of holy water when he kicked back a swig and tossed it to Sam. Castiel didn't flinch as the flask narrowly missed his head, the metal reflecting the red and blue flashers of approaching emergency vehicles before they roared from the scene.

Sam was more than a little disappointed Castiel's head didn't hit the back window due to the sudden acceleration, and he swallowed the disappointment with the rest of Bobby's whiskey.

When the walls started crawling in the middle of the night, he chalked it up to good whiskey and bad housekeeping, because cockroaches couldn't dance. And once he stuffed cotton balls in his ears, they couldn't sing either.

--_**November, 2013-Cabin  
**_  
He awoke, but his eyes remained closed.

Dean clasped a handful of blanket with his right hand, clenching and releasing against the matt fuzziness of shabby wool, dank from condensation and sweat.

A cascading trickle of light seeped through the window, caused him to shield his eyes. He blinked away the watery blur, felt the saline spill over his cheek and dissolve into the pillow.

The pads of his finger tips tingled, with the flat of his hand he brushed over the bedding, feeling the kinetic warmth seep into his skin. Being... whatever he was-- undead, immortal, a monster of unknown composition-- felt oddly familiar. He was reminded of months, years locked away in his own mind, in the dark, starved for any kind of input with only the walls and floor to touch, only his breath in his ears, straining, straining to distinguish what sound was heartbeats and what was footsteps, how a slip of tissue paper under the door snapped and crackled like staticky sheets out of a hot dryer. Everything looked sharper, brighter, clearer, and felt hotter, colder... emptier, like the world had turned to liquid, and he was swimming instead of standing, going down the drain.

He was surprised to find his legs met the floor with a solid thunk and then bore his weight, half expected something of a moon landing effect. He stood, stayed standing, and eventually the room stopped spinning, but the air stayed heavy and eddied over his skin like water. Looking down to his fingertips took three distinct movements of his head, everything herky-jerky and disconnected. Despite the tingling and general sensation of melting and oozing, nothing dripped from his fingertips, and no amount of staring at them, perplexed, could dull the sensation that there was.

His breath came out in clouds, white that picked up flecks of light from the barely glowing coals in the fireplace. Without reason, he followed it to the window, one breath at a time, and when he reached the glass, the edges of frost between the muttons curled back away from him like the edges of a page on a fire. It shimmered. Frost did that. Frost with a full moon back drop had always done that. But now it was different. The occasional sparkle of silver became a glow, became a rolling arc of blue-white current. Mesmerized, he leaned closer, lips nearly brushing the glass, and chased back the frost one huffing breath at a time, trembling fingertips following in its wake, until he'd cleared a whole square of glass and bumped against a mutton. Dean butted up against the metal, and jerked back, the difference between the glass and the divider so different, it pulsed through is arm like a feedback whine through a telephone.

Fingers drawn up to eye level, he expected to find them charred or bleeding. Instead, melted frost slid between the whorls, then down his wrist and over the pulse point, all the way to the crook of his elbow. That's when he realized he wasn't wearing a shirt. And he was cold.

The curtains on the window were some sort of linen, and up-close, Dean could see tar stains and discolorations, maybe from the fireplace, or maybe the owner was a smoker. He fisted a handful of the fabric, ignoring the way it felt like sandpaper against his skin, and pulled. The entire thing came down along with the rod and half of the hangers, which pinged to the floor and skated away into the darkness. He drew it up over his head and let it slide down to his shoulders, fought with it briefly as it caught in his ponytail. At that point, he caught his reflection in the exposed glass. The opaque whites of his eyes and the silver piercings were like a broken constellation against black. Exhaling slowly, he backed away a step so the breath was cold by the time it hit the glass and curled into new tendrils of frost, new sparkles of reflected moonlight that gratefully occluded the reflection of what he'd become.

With a jerk, the curtain slid down to rest upon his shoulders, taking out the ponytail holder so the hair fell over his eyes. He didn't brush it away. Securing the drape around his neck, he reached inside, out of habit, to pull the amulet out and lay it on top.

Only it wasn't there.

Suddenly, he wasn't swimming anymore. He was drowning, stumbling through the cabin, into walls and chairs, the curtain dragging behind him like a fishing net, and no matter how hard he listened, all he heard was huffing breath, thudding footsteps, pounding heartbeat, not... NOT what he needed to hear. He didn't plan to go out into the snow, but when he reached the door (_Do not open the door, Dean_) he opened it.

　  
--_****_

_Run away like a prodigal...  
_  
Sam's eyes snapped open, then promptly rolled in their sockets. The Unheavenly Host was serenading him again. He hadn't quite found the word for it-- avatar, maybe? Or effigy? Familiar? He just knew he'd sleep a lot better if he made good on his promise to kill the damned thing, but what would be the point? It always came back. He hummed a line from the "The Cat Came Back," if for no other reason than to avoid having to hear it come over the speakers, and he rolled over on his cot to find Smelly Cat glaring up at him, yellow eyes half-squinted, tail question marking one way and then the other. "Always with the impeccable timing." Who needed an alarm clock when he had immortality and nothing at all to do with the time of day? If he was still mostly warm-blooded, he probably would've noticed the chill in the air, but he actually needed to see the front door standing wide open before he got the message.

He rolled out of bed and jumped over the loft railing to the floor, not because he was in a hurry, just because he could, landed hard enough to shake a picture frame off the wall behind him. He stood on the front porch with his arms folded across his chest. The sunrise was really quite spectacular, and he usually didn't bother getting up early enough to see it. He figured he might as well take the opportunity while he could. Dean would keep.

Sam just hoped he wouldn't be frozen when he found him, though admittedly, a stiff body was much easier to maneuver than a limp one. He knew from experience. Thinking on it a moment longer, he decided to start the fire and get a cup of coffee before he went out. He shut the door and went back inside, scratching the back of his head and tapping on his bluetooth.

"When did he leave?"

"About two hours ago."

"I don't suppose he left a note."

"How the hell would I know?" Doc was always such a charmer in the morning.

"Just making conversation," Sam said, grimacing at the bitter reheated coffee as he removed it from the microwave and forced a swallow down. "How far do you think he can get?"

"I'd take the snowmobile," Doc suggested.

"Can't. I dumped out all the gas," Sam shrugged. "Besides, looks like a beautiful day for a hike. I've been dying to try out these snowshoes."

"You're an ass."

"And you have a foul mouth." Sam smirked. "Just for that, I might bring you inside to cat-sit while I'm gone."

"You wouldn't."

"Oh, I would."

Morning routine out of the way, fire crackling under the hearth, the sun was over the tree line when Sam finally left the cabin.

He wasn't even winded when Dean came into sight, plodding along at a slow, steady pace, deceptively determined considering the trail of footsteps zigzagged and loopty-looped thither and yon like the tracks of a fox tracking a mouse under the snow. He expected Dean to acknowledge his presence, maybe run away, but he neither sped up nor picked a direction that could accurately be described as 'away.' Sam got the distinct feeling that if he were to run ahead and wait, Dean would walk right into him rather than try to evade. Instead he sped up just enough to fall into step behind. From there he could hear Dean talking to himself but not what he was saying, a constant stream of words slurred together and muted by the rattling saw of breath. He sounded like a man in the throes of an asthma attack or an anaphylactic reaction, yet his words seemed unconcerned, without inflection even when they started to come in bursts of only one or two as his breath grew shorter. He couldn't tell if Dean was ignoring him, or if this was the new Dean Winchester version of blind panic.

"Y'know," Sam said, "I can appreciate you wanting to get your sea legs back and all, but since you don't really seem to have a destination in mind, I'm gonna have to suggest you meander your way back the way you came."

Dean came to a stumbling halt, straightening enough so that he wasn't tipped into the wind but not enough to expose the front of his body to the cold. That curtain couldn't have been providing much warmth. His head tipped almost comically toward the sound of Sam's voice, then wobbled around on a spindly neck. He managed to croak out, "Why?" before the wobble transferred down his spine to his knees and he sat down hard, all the grace of a pinwheel with bent spokes.

Sam stopped beside him, his knees at Dean's shoulder height. His hands in the pockets of his coat, he shrugged, flapping the coattails around his calves, considered saying something on the order of, 'because I said so,' but decided the truth couldn't hurt. He trained an assessing eye on the reddened scratch marks clawed into the Dean's collar bone and down his chest where his fingers still scraped and dug, already having ripped off the top two buttons. "Pestilence."

To Sam's chagrin, Dean only glanced up at him, barely a twitch of an eyebrow before he went back to scratching and heaving, lips moving but not enough air to make words.

"I got the powers of all four horsemen," he explained, "but that's one of my favorites. I mean, how awesome is it that I can say 'a pox on you,' and have it actually happen?"

Dean tipped forward, turned his head at the last second so as not to end up with a mouthful of snow, and sprawled flat out, his gasps coming farther and farther apart.

"It's all in the blood, you know." Sam stooped beside his prone brother and snaked a hand around his neck, felt out the thready, erratic pulse. Looked like he'd be carrying Dean back up the mountain. Made him wish he hadn't trashed the Mule's engine when he parked it in the shed. "Mine's like gumbo, every kind of disease boiled down into the rue." He clapped a hand on Dean's shoulder, left his arm draped around his back. "Thing is, I can control what I want to get out and when." He paused for dramatic effect, because even if Dean didn't get the joke, the art of comedy was still in the timing, and no punch line should be delivered before it's time. "You got any latent psychic ability I don't know about? 'Cause you got a whole lot of my super unleaded flowing through your veins. I wouldn't recommend you expose anyone to yourself unless you actually _want_ to see someone's face melt off."

Dean worked a hand out from under himself and took his last breath while staring at his waggling fingers.

Sam stood from his crouched position and gazed up the long trail back to the cabin. With a sigh and a roll of his eyes, he said, "You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille," and heaved Dean over his shoulder.

He couldn't even blame the cat for that one, but he was still gonna kill it one of these days.

--

A week later, Dean still hadn't found his 'sea legs' or his amulet. He hadn't really asked about either one. Sam was more than happy to monologue and proselytize about Dean's purpose, his progress, what the next stage of the experiment would entail. From his count, he'd died about four times already, and true to Sam's promise, he always came back, along with the tingling, hypersensitivity, and crawling skin awareness that things weren't quite working out like he'd planned.

Not that he'd ever had a solid plan. Everything was a hunch, but one thing he'd learned in his years of isolation was to trust his instincts. If that translated to "Have faith in yourself, Dean," then he had to hand it to Castiel, because he never had that before, only going with his gut when there was no other choice. Now, that was pretty much the only choice. He was fine with that. He was. This wasn't really about him, anyway. It hadn't been since he opened the door.

　  
-- _**January, 2013-- Three and a half years in solitary  
**_  
　  
The walls had been coming down for what seemed like hours. It started with just a vibration in the floor, escalated to floorboards jumping out of their grooves and rattling together like old bones, and that was before his notes started coming loose of the walls and fluttering down, disappearing between the widening cracks. Dean didn't stop to think how imaginary corkboard and plaster could generate the same sound as a blackboard with fingernails scritching over the surface, just clapped his hands over his ears and slid backwards against the door. The one glance through the portal he managed before the peephole closed revealed nothing but desert and a legion rising out of it, shimmering mirages through a wall of heat, that could either have been real or just imagined like puddles of water on pavement, but he had a feeling it was real. Hard to say, just then, whether the rush of adrenaline through him was hope or fear, some of both, but when the walls started to come down, leaving just him and the door in a swirling cloud of darkness, he stopped trying to wait for the smoke to clear.

He didn't know anyone was on the other side of the door until he tried to turn the knob and it turned the other way, sliding through the sweaty grip of his palm to rattle in the latch. It was pointless to ask who was there, could only be one of two people so far as he could tell, and he wouldn't hear the answer anyway. Hand fumbling for the knob, he knew there was as much chance the whole thing was a ploy to flush him out and force him into the open, but after three and a half years, the emptiness of the room was almost more stifling than the cloying fear of what lay beyond. If anything, were this an attempt to flush him out, it was definitely overkill on the part of whoever set it up.

As the knob turned three quarters of the way to open, the entire door tilted back on him, so that he was bent at the knee, thighs pressed against his calves and forehead to the wood when it finally sprang open. The second the latch released, all the coiled tension in his body went with it and thrust him through the opening like a jack in the box on the last note of "Pop, Goes the Weasel." He wound up draped over the bottom of the door frame, fingers scrabbling for whatever purchase they could find on the other side.

What they found was a hand, and then two small fingers, curled around his own and keeping him from sliding backward. With a kick and heave, he lurched out, wound up atop two feet clad in black Dickies work boots, a size he hadn't worn in fifteen years, at least.

"Dean! Hurry! Lucifer's coming!"

The voice... familiar, but impossible. "Sss-sam?"

He rolled, partially on purpose and partially due to the floor bucking beneath him, wound up staring up into the face of his nine-year-old brother.

Sam must've noticed the confusion on his face or anticipated his reaction. "What?" he asked. "You really thought I left you here all alone?"

Standing slowly, Dean grasped Sam's shoulders and stared into his eyes, looking for any flicker of something that would indicate it was not Sam at all, but he could find nothing, found his fingers curling tightly into the soft hoodie. "How long? When? I thought?"

"I'm sorry I couldn't tell you it was me," Sam answered, and when he did, he used Dean's voice, the same sickening sweet Dean's voice Dean had been hearing through the door for years. "If I had, you would have opened the door."

"But, if it's you, then how...?" So many questions, so many things that didn't add up.

"You say, 'you' as though we were ever really two separate people." Sam smiled, then-- tired and a little sad-- before he said, "Now, go!"

Confused, Dean shook himself to an upright position, suddenly reminded that the world was closing in around them, a cloud of black so dark even he couldn't see through it with eyes that'd grown accustomed to the lack of light. It swirled overhead, faster and faster, flinging loose one long tendril and then another. He realized in horror that each one had a hold of Sam, was wrapped around his legs and ankles, his neck, climbing higher, drawing tighter.

"No! I'm not leaving you."

Sam laughed, or at least his face laughed, lungs squeezed too tight to follow through. "You couldn't..." He gasped. "... if you wanted to." With his one free hand, he reached into the pocket of his hoodie and drew out a key, a bone key exactly like the one Dean had shattered in the lock all those months ago. "Where you go, I go." He pressed the key into Dean's hand. "Now, run away, and don't forget... to lock the door behind you."

"Sam..."

"Just do it!" With that, Sam jerked free of the vines and dove through the open doorway. The whoosh of movement as the cloud moved to follow slammed the door shut behind him, and no matter how Dean tried to push through it, he couldn't reach more than the keyhole.

The cloud buzzed in his ears like a swarm of bees, made it impossible to think. He shut his eyes, fighting for composure, the key zinging in his hand, when a voice echoed behind his ears. "_Where you go, I go_." The last reverberation twanged like a tuning fork, the pitch gradually rising until it overwhelmed his senses, sound into light, and he saw it, a spark in the darkness, zinging over the backdrop of his eyelids in a pattern he not only recognized but knew by heart. "_The door swings both ways._"

When he opened his eyes, the keyhole was the only thing still visible, glowing like a beacon.

He broke that key, too.

And then he ran.

**--**_**January, 2013-Death Valley, California  
**_**  
**Dean only realized he was on his knees when the world pulled back suddenly, serpent slither on the very edges of his vision, and he tipped the opposite way. The slip and slide jerked to an abrupt halt with the closing of a fist in the collar of his jacket. When he opened his eyes… brown loafers. One even still had the penny showing, a little green around the edges, but still there, United States of America, In God We Trust, and all that jazz. There was still a good ol' US of A, and its pennies were still worthless. They won. Didn't they? That deserved a moment of silence, even a forfeit one. And how could the world be a hollow victory?

"Cas..." Fuck, his throat hurt, every bit as dry and raw as it had been the last time he woke up with Castiel at his side.

Only Castiel.

Whether he couldn't--or wouldn't--speak, silence was a good enough cover for the chaos that accompanied waking from a years-long nightmare. Dean clutched his throat, massaging at it with fingers too bony to be his own, like some puppet hand or prosthesis had attached itself to the stump of what used to be Dean Winchester, and Castiel tipped him from nearly face-planted in the dirt to squinting up into the noonday sun. Still that sickening sensation of something swirling and swimming on the periphery, most likely the ghost mirage of heat off the baked sand. Fucking Death Valley. He sure knew how to pick a place to make a last stand, out of the frying pan and into the fire. Oh yeah, Dean was home. At least, as close to it as he'd ever been. Bring on the peace and rest, baby, because he was tired, and his whole body ached and throbbed, radiating from the inside like a tanning lamp set too high and working the wrong side of his skin.

Understandable. Still sucked, though. Last time, the burn was leftover from a vent tube. What came out this time was a whole lot bigger, and Dean didn't have to remember to know it (only it, because He was too much credit, too personal for something with no right to be so) went kicking and screaming. But at least it went.

His eyes rolled around in their gritty sockets, the scrape barely enough to spring tears to the corners when there was likely no moisture to spare in the rest of his body. He wasn't looking for anything, turned inside out and backward, but something found him, piercing eyes and cowlick of sun-bleached hair over parched lips. Castiel laid him down, held him there with a hand flat over his chest, then proceeded to try and drown him with water trickled from a flask he produced from a pocket. Not exactly a miracle or anything befitting an angel of the Lord, but appreciated nonetheless. When in Rome, you know? Dean spluttered and choked but tipped his head up and opened his mouth for more, Castiel's voice a cicada drone in his ears.  
"You stopped it."  
"Good… I guess." So, why did he feel like _it_ stopped _him_?

**--**_**November, 2013--Cabin, One Week Later  
**_  
"Your endurance is shot to hell."

Dean didn't answer, knew he wasn't really expected to. When Sam was like this, hovering and poking, that little puzzling line between his eyebrows, he was either talking to himself or having conversations with who or whatever spoke to him through that headset. Use of the pronoun 'you' was just a formality, shorter than 'the subject' since Sam refused to call him by name when he was on the table. Dean actually found that to be a good thing. It would be a hell of a lot harder to convince himself Sam was still in there if Sam ever acknowledged the meat suit petri dish on the table was actually his brother. Dean's Sam wasn't a monster... yet. There was still some Sammy in there, or maybe, in _here_.

Not that it mattered. He couldn't open the door without the key.

Dean caught Sam's wrist, his grip not strong, but placed in such a way as to make Sam almost drop the scalpel, blade still slicked with blood. "I want my necklace back," he said.

Sam met his eyes, and for a second the yellow flickered to something deeper, almost green, and the lines at the corners of his lashes almost smoothed out... almost. Dean knew he was pressing his luck. Catching Sam off guard like that had produced mixed results so far. While Dean found it promising, that little crack in the monster mask, Sam didn't seem to appreciate the slip. Like milking the venom from a snake bite. Out with the bad and in with the good... he hoped. This time, the moment lingered, their gazes locked until the scalpel finally dropped from Sam's fingers and pinged to the floor. Then his jaw set, angry huff of breath through flared nostrils, and Dean wasn't really surprised when he picked the scalpel off the floor and went right back to cutting. Through the haze of pain, and right before he passed out, he heard Sam hiss, "The good Lord giveth, and He taketh away."

His eyes rolled back in his head, and stayed there, focused on the runes emblazoned in his memory on tiny squares of toilet paper. He still couldn't read them, after three and a half years, but he was willing to bet 'Door Number Two' was a fair enough interpretation. Body convulsing one last time, he tumbled into darkness.

--

_I'm the invisible man. I'm the invisible man.  
_  
"He came back wrong." Sam scowled against the window pane, watched as Dean lit his third cigarette on the cherry of the second before grinding the butt into the porch with his heel. Dean must've felt the weight of his glance, judging by the way he kept glancing back over his shoulder to where Sam stood in the window. Sam really wished he'd stop doing that. He had no desire to see the fresh black tattooed around Dean's lips or the deep cut in the lower one Sam had put there when he saw the new ink. Pretty soon it wouldn't even look like Dean anymore.

"Hypersensitivity is a known complication," Doc chimed in his ear. The electronic voice was all wrong, too high, too feminine, too chipper, and spaced out too precisely like someone trying to force logic where there was none. Or maybe it just seemed that way in context. "The serum is a neurotoxin. It kills the old nervous system while slowly building a new, more efficient one. It allows primary functions to continue after traumatic injury or... organ loss. His central nervous system is practically its own entity. Once the old nerves stop resisting and allow themselves to be reabsorbed, the pain will stop and most likely, the self-mutilation will as well."

As if Dean's behavior was nothing more than adolescent angst and growing pains. Cutting like a teenage girl in a bad relationship. Except Dean wasn't just slashing himself. His cuts were deliberate, patterns and symbols that looked like runes, but nothing Sam recognized, nothing _Dean_ should recognize to the best of Sam's knowledge. Half of him suspected Dean was only doing it to piss him off. The other half hadn't failed to notice the strange thrum and twang that went through him sometimes when he touched Dean without gloves or a blade. It wasn't just the necklace, then, since Dean hadn't had his hands on it for weeks. It was Dean, or something Dean was doing.

_I'm the invisible man. I'm the invisible man_

And Sam wouldn't mind, really. Whatever tripped Dean's trigger, so long as he stayed, but he was just so... relentless, like he could think of nothing else except carving and tattooing himself into an archaic totem of some sort. He kinda reminded Sam of Sam, back in the days when he was studying for the SATs, deadset on landing a scholarship and getting out on his own. He hadn't cared, then, if it was like he wasn't even there anymore. Figured Dean and Dad needed to learn to deal without him anyway, because he wasn't staying. Now, he couldn't help but resent that Dean didn't seem to have any time for him, when Sam was the only reason Dean was still even around. Seemed all they did was bicker.

He'd expected a mourning period, some pouting, maybe some flailing, bitching and moaning. Instead, he got Dean the little princess, working tirelessly to weave vests out of nettle even as she rolled to her execution.

_Incredible how you can, see right through me._

It was maddening, which would mean a lot more if Sam wasn't already convinced he was insane.

Smoke curled out of Dean's nose and the corners of his lips while he peeled at something on his thumb that seemed to be bothering him. Probably skin. He said it crawled. Said it the way he said the sky was blue or the ground was hard. When the last tendril wafted away, Dean took another long drag, the cherry smoldering bright red, then let the cigarette dangle lax in his mouth while the breath leaked out of him. Their eyes locked for a second when he glanced over his shoulder for the dozenth time.

"But it's still him, right?" Sam asked.

"I've been rebuilt at least ten times. I'm still me as far as I know."

"He's not how I remember him." The Dean he knew shrugged off concussion, impalement, dislocation, and internal bleeding, but cussed like a sailor for the duration of his one and only tattooing session. He was complicated and contradictory, churning below the surface but cocksure and steady on top. This one was just... absorbed. Otherwise occupied. Not at home.

_I'm the invisible man. I'm the invisible man. _

"That's an unfair expectation, isn't it?"

"Why? I went to all this trouble, months of planning, so I could have my brother. If I wanted just anyone I could stand in the road and put out my thumb."

"Your brother?"

"And that's not him."

"What you mean is, he's not behaving like you planned."

"I guess."

"Why should he give you what you want?"

"I'm his brother. That's what family is for."

"You've been standing in the window for fifteen minutes and you haven't even fogged up the glass. The way he sees it, _you're _the one who came back wrong."

_It's criminal how you can, see right through me._

"I can't change what I am."

"Then change his mind."

Sam snorted, marring the glass by bumping it with his forehead. Change Dean's mind. Antichrist or not, Sam wasn't sure the power to do that even existed. The Apocalypse was a shorter order.

--  
**  
**"What? Does that hurt?" Sam gripped Dean's wrist hard enough to feel the bones shift and scrape against each other. If Dean would just suck it up and hold still, but no, he kept jerking away, and Sam was forced to find a ragged rhythm. Grip, twist, jab, and jerk, the last two steps in rapid succession if he wanted to make a clean stitch and not just end up tearing the skin with the needle. "You can't be wussing out over some stitches. You're getting soft, big brother." Grip, twist, jab, and jerk. He cussed as Dean's sweat-slick arm slipped his grasp, tearing yet another stitch.

"Fuck!" Sam tossed the arm away, the gaping cut along the front still only half stitched. Sam should just let the bastard bleed out. It wouldn't be the first time, but he was making a mess, and Sam knew from experience, he wasn't going to clean it up. Sam might be the Antichrist, but cleanliness was still next to godliness. Apparently that old saying wasn't God specific.

He stood abruptly and leaned in, because there was no point in being the top of the food chain if he couldn't fucking _loom_ over the rest of it. "You know what you need?" When Dean didn't look up, Sam yanked his head back, waited until the white eyes squinted and slid in his general direction. "Visual aids." Releasing his grip, he cuffed Dean on the back of the head and strolled out onto the porch, taking care to make sure each footfall vibrated through the floor boards hard enough to jangle the glassware on the other side of the cabin.

He came back a few minutes later dangling Doc from one hand like something out of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, minus the cape and horse. Smelly Cat stayed close on his heels, Sylvester eyeing Tweety in the overhead cage, twined between Sam's legs, and nearly tripping him three times before he gave up and just stomped on its tail. The cat gave a hiss and smacked him hard on the knee with his paw, then scuttled under the table, now with a noticeable kink in his trailing appendage.

_Don't lose our head! Don't lose your head!  
_  
"Doc, Dean, Dean, Doc," he introduced, "I believe you've met." He dropped the head on the table and propped it up between two ceramic salt and pepper shakers so Doc ended up glaring over Dean's head to the ceiling fan and had to look down his own nose to see anything else.

Nodding decisively, Sam settled back into the chair across from Dean and held out his hand. "Now, you can suck it up and let me stitch this up, or you can end up like Doc here. Y'know, he didn't even whimper when I sawed off the rest of his body." He wiped his shirt sleeve across his upper lip. "Of course, he was probably glad to be rid of it. Sucker was rank. Nothing like smell of putrefied flesh in the morning."

Dean spared the corpse head one or two fleeting glances, then ducked his eyes away and held out his arm. Sam chuckled. "I knew you'd see it my way. You just gotta ask yourself, how pretty do you want to be a thousand years from now?

Seeing that Sam was preoccupied, Smelly Cat took advantage of the situation and jumped up on the table, circling 'round and 'round Doc Benton like the leg of his favorite human. With each pass the crooked tail somehow ended up under Doc's nose, and Sam had to laugh at the genius of that move. Tried to imagine having cat hairs lodged in his sinuses and no lungs to sneeze them out with. Sometimes, old Smelly Cat was a cat after Sam's own heart.

_Don't drink and drive your car. Don't get breathalyzed. Don't lose your hea-aad._

And sometimes he was just a pain in the ass. Sam tore the newly inserted stitch himself this time, jerking his elbow to shove the cat away from the table. When Doc tipped over and wound up flat on his left cheek, Sam turned off his headset. A hundred year old head shouldn't even know some of those words.

Grab, twist, jab, jerk, Sam finished up the rest of the stitches on that arm and then the other, silence punctuated only by an occasional grunt and hiss. When it was over, he patted everything dry with a clean towel. He held onto Dean's left arm, admiring his work, tiny, neat stitches perfectly spaced. "Let's not have any more stunts like that, okay? You're not doing anyone any favors. Doc doesn't even have blood or lungs, and he's still alive. You've got his serum and my blood to spice things up. You're stuck here."

"I wasn't trying to..." Dean started and then stopped, already scratching at the wound, a nervous tick Sam knew would progress to pressing his thumbnail into the skin hard enough to leave a red, raised line, which he'd then cut and tattoo on later, when Sam wasn't looking.

"Weren't what? Trying to kill yourself?" Sam dropped his utensils into the wash bin like so much silverware, glaring sidelong. "No, I get that. You want me to do it for you? You think I will?" He couldn't take Dean's distraction and pinged him between the eyes until he looked up. "You think it's not suicide if you get me to do it for you?"

Standing less deliberately this time, he grasped Doc by the hook and dragged him off the table instead of making a clean lift, just because he could. "I don't know where suicides go, but I know there's no place in Heaven for what we are, natural death or not. So you might as well enjoy the scenery while you're here, because it's gonna be a long, long time." A beat. "But look at the bright side. At least you're not alone."

He was out the door when he added, "And neither am I."

He wasn't surprised at all when he came back in from the porch to find Dean with his gun leveled on him. He couldn't die either, but it still hurt like a bitch when the bullet tore through his chest. He laughed a little before sitting down at the table to stitch himself up. "There now. Glad we got that out of our system. Soon as I'm done here, I'll cook us some dinner. Mac and cheese?"

Dean stared at him blankly.

"Yeah, sounds good to me, too."

　  
_**--July, 2012--Gettysburg, Pennsylvania  
**_  
　  
"Sam, you can't keep using your powers." Castiel pressed a cloth to the cut on Sam's head.

"What do my powers have to do with anything? I just tripped on my way to the bathroom." No way Castiel knew he'd brained himself on the corner of the table while trying to catch a rat that wouldn't stop singing the theme from "The Mickey Mouse Club." That was only in Sam's head. Sure, stuff like that was happening all the time now-- every night, worse on nights after a battle, but Sam thought he was doing a pretty good job of hiding the after-effects. And as far as he knew, Castiel wasn't getting much in the way of phone calls from home to tip him off.

Castiel ignored his denial. "If you continue to use your powers to kill, then we will lose our connection to Dean."

Sam snapped to attention. Fucking angel always knew more than he was letting on and always knew just which cat to let out of the bag in a given situation. "I don't know what you're talking about. We're taking out Lucifer's Generals. Isn't that why we need the connection to Dean in the first place? Why find out who they are if we're not supposed to kill them?"

Castiel took Sam's hand and placed it over the cloth so that Sam was holding it in place himself. "You are right. They need to die. But you cannot always be the one to deliver the final blow."

"I..." Sam choked a little. "Lucifer's got my brother, Cas! He took him from right beside me, and I couldn't do a thing to stop it." He dropped the cloth, hands going to his hair which had gotten longer than usual, but still not as long as Dean's was when they caught that glimpse of him in Phoenix. "I couldn't do anything then, but I can do this, now. I have to..."

"No. You do not." Castiel didn't raise his voice, but his gaze didn't falter, eyes hard and set so that Sam had to look away.

"Why not? They're angel powers, now, right? Not demon. I'm using them for good. I don't see the problem."

"The problem is that while you are part angel you are also part human." Castiel looked down, searching for words, then spoke more to the lapels of his coat than to Sam. "Something cold and dark has tainted my brothers. Eons of hatred and betrayal. Where do you think that goes when you kill one of them? Just evaporates into the ether?" He took one step forward and then crouched at the side of Sam's bed, looked up into Sam's face like he was begging to be heard. "It does not. It stays. And you... you draw it like a magnet. A human... the very thing they loathe, and an angel." He ducked down further when Sam tried to dodge his eyes away. "I cannot remove that taint from you the way I did the demon. If you do not stop, you will be no better than they are. You will be lost."

"What about the taint that's already in me?" Barely a whisper. Sam almost didn't believe he was admitting as much, but if Castiel knew, could tell him he wasn't going insane...

"I am working to find a way to destroy it. But if there is a way, it is more ancient than I. I do not know that it can be removed." Sam felt himself sag a little, breath suddenly not holding up his chest wall. "So, you need to stop." A hand closed over Sam's knee and squeezed. "We will get Dean back. And when he comes back, he will need his brother. Stop." Castiel asked again. "For him."

And he did, until he met Lucifer.

　  
_**--December, 2013--Cabin**_

_Opened, opened, opened up the window.  
__**  
**_A hunting trip probably wasn't Sam's best or most original idea.

"We're going hunting for a few days. Running low on meat in the freezer."  
_**  
**_A change of scenery was in order. Some fresh air, the great outdoors, a couple days away from the bubble, bubble toil and trouble chemistry set and speakers that had a gone from randomly blaring out anything to playing the theme from "Silver Spoons" on an endless loop. Smelly Cat knew it pissed him off and stayed out of sight for the most part, only occasionally wending his way between Sam's feet when he stood in the doorway and watched the exodus move through the yard.

_Loaded, loaded, loaded up the rifle.  
_  
Dean barely looked up from what he was doing-- carving little spider web patterns into the tips of his fingers. (He swore the scar tissue didn't tingle as much as the bare skin. Of course, wearing gloves was a stupid idea, because it was Sam's.) "Then stand in the yard and wait for something to come by. This place is like Mecca for all the wild and woolies lately. It's like they're on a freaking pilgrimage."

He was half right. It was more like an exodus. Every predator on the mountain was making the pilgrimage, and everything else was being flushed out ahead of them. Running away. No lions lying with lambs around here. Sam wasn't entirely sure what brought them around, whether they saw him as a leader or a threat. Maybe the stampede of rabbits and deer was some kind offering. At any rate, Dean was right. A hunting trip was a pretty piss poor excuse, and a thinly veiled one at that.

"C'mon. You're like T-Rex. You don't want to be fed. You want to hunt. It's in your blood."

"Really? I didn't know I had any of _my_ blood left."

"Well, then let's find out." Sam didn't intend to hit Dean on the head with the cap and gloves he chucked at him or to drop the snow boots on his stocking-clad feet, but he wasn't sorry he did it either. "Get off your ass and let's go."

S_hot, he shot, he shot, he shot her in the chest.  
_  
Dean might or might not have sighted down the barrel of his gun in Sam's direction before sliding it into his jeans. Sam pretended not to notice and gathered up the rest of their gear.

_And then, and then, he went right back to bed.  
_

"Dude, take that outside."

"We are outside," Dean huffed.

"No, we're in a tent." Sam kicked the sleeping bag off his legs hard enough for it to slap the wall and shake the whole enclosure as if to prove his point.

"We're in a tent outside." Dean took another long drag, and smoke curled up to the ceiling.

"So, how's that different from being in a cabin that's outside?" Sam shook his head, because Dean was messing with it, and he knew full well that was the whole point. "Never mind. We're in _closed quarters_ then. Common courtesy would be to smoke your cigarettes outside."

"You go outside. You're the one who's not fogging up the mirror anymore. Cold won't bother you."

"But the smoke will still be here when I come back. What's the point of that?"

"You live with a corpseless head on a hook, and you think cigarettes stink?"

"_We_ live with a rotting head, who's really pissed at being left behind, by the way, and we have air fresheners for that."

"Then why didn't you bring some?"

"We're outside! Who needs air fresheners for the great outdoors?"

"I thought you said we were inside."

"You're twisting my words."

"Must be all that high octane Antichrist blood I got in me. Hear that dude's a real politician."

"Yeah, well, he learned everything he knows from his big brother."

Silence followed, so crushing Sam wondered if the tent would collapse on them.

Dean took another drag off his cigarette, and for a moment held it in his chest, choked up high against his throat. Then, he huffed it out hard enough to get it in Sam's face where it would, no doubt, bond to his hair and cling for the rest of the trip. Sam's hands curled into fists as Dean turned his blank eyes up from the floor and fixed them on Sam defiantly.

In one smooth lunge, Dean reached over head and slit a circular opening in the roof of the tent with his knife, blade flashing in the lantern light.

"There, now the smoke's outside." His voice cut as deftly as the knife.

Sam felt it bubble up from his center, something cold, and spiteful, and dark. The nylon walls fluttered as though a storm was blowing up around them. Maybe one was. Dean continued to smoke, unblinking, his left hand clawing up his right arm where he'd already dug a row of grooves and tattooed them on for posterity.

Sam tore the zipper on his way out and didn't come back until Dean was sound asleep.

When Dean was little, he used to get ear infections, the kind that no hot water bottle and baby medicine could fix, that made him cry into his pillowcase through the night waiting for the pain to go away so he could sleep. What he remembered most about that was the same thing he remembered about the sleepless nights he spent at eighteen, cutting wisdom teeth that refused to come through. When something hurt that bad, every pulse of his heart made it throb, and there was no sound louder than the sound of his own heart beating in his ears.

He hadn't really been able to hear much of anything since he woke up with Sam, the new Sam, looming over him with his glass of black poison. So, when he woke to whispering, harsh yet silent and scraping over his eardrums only a decibel louder than the throb, throb, throb of blood pounding through his veins, a thrill rushed through him. He wouldn't call it hope. There was no way he had any of that left, but definitely relief.

Anticipation.

Someone was trying to talk to him.

_We fought to get to you in time, but we were too late._

Funny. Not long ago, he'd resented having them there, always talking, plotting, waiting for him to answer and tell them what they needed to know about Lucifer's plans, but during the worst of it -- that years playing passenger in his own body -- they were the only reassurance he'd had. Castiel said they'd all gone now, and Dean shouldn't be able to hear or speak with them anymore, but he woke to whispers, and for a second, wanted to believe they'd come back.

But only for a second.

Almost immediately, the whispers crescendoed to a scream, sharp claws over some blackboard in his head, and every muscle in his body clamped down, squeezing breath from him like water from a sponge. He curled into the fetal position, tensed when he felt Sam asleep at his back. With a spasm, he flipped over toward the opposite wall. He jerked away and pulled back the tent flap, his hands tetanic and refusing to cooperate, making it nearly impossible to work the zipper.

The first touch of snow against his palms jolted through him like electricity, still soothing in comparison to the liquid fire inside his skin. All he could manage was to crawl out into the nearest drift, dragging his legs more than using them, before he collapsed face-first into the cold.

The wet on his cheeks was only melted snow. He had nothing to cry about. He wasn't a child, and this wasn't an earache. This was forever, so he might as well suck it up, but it wasn't about him. Never was. Something was wrong. More wrong than being... whatever it was he was, undead, unliving, fake. He wasn't stupid. Dean knew he was an experiment. Knew experiments usually failed lots of times before they succeeded. He was never really worried about living forever, because not even Sam with powers was immune to the law of averages. He was never afraid of living forever. Alone or otherwise.

But suddenly, with his body on fire, nerve endings threatening to claw out of his skin, he was afraid of dying. "Not yet. Not yet. Not yet," he whispered, breath hot and scorching over his tongue.

After all, Castiel told him there were no rain checks. Sam said no one would come for him the way he was now. Dean was the only one. He'd already given up Heaven. Wouldn't lose Sam, too.

"Not yet, not yet, not yet..." Something tugged at his leg, and he whipped around to find a wolf, teeth buried in the cuff of his jeans and pulling for all it was worth. "Dear God..."

God never came to Gethsemane, and he didn't come to Dean either.

But Sam did.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** Don't own. No harm intended. Fair use only.

--_**Death Valley, December 2012  
**_  
It must have been the eyes. Somehow, Sam didn't really have a problem dealing with the piercings, the hair, the fucking Matrix-esque wardrobe and space-bending power surges. All those things, bizarre and so un-Dean like made it easier to keep his focus, to fight with the sword Castiel had made for him and not with his mind, but when the dust cleared and there was no one left standing but himself and the fallen angel in the Dean Winchester suit, they faced each other, one on one for the first time, and those were Dean's eyes.

Maybe he promised Castiel. Maybe he promised Bobby. Hell, maybe he even promised Dean, couldn't remember, couldn't ever remember. And how unfair was it that Castiel could hear Sam's conversations with Dean and Sam couldn't? Maybe he and Dean hadn't really been apart for three and half years already, had met nightly on some spiritual plane, but when he looked into Lucifer's face and Dean looked out at him, something in Sam collapsed, left him weak and finished, spirit posed like the End of the Trail statue. The sword clattered to the ground, heavy, and behind him Bobby pleaded, gasping through the pain of a broken leg that kept him from standing. Castiel wasn't there to talk him through the surge that sparked up from his toes, prickled at his fingertips, the angel struck down by a bolt of lightning before the battle even began.

Sam didn't understand the expression on Lucifer's face when he raised his hands and let the power loose. He shouldn't have looked that pleased to make it to the brink and be defeated. Unless what he wanted was to...

Sam tried to stop, pulled back before the final gasp and flicker, but he didn't have Lucifer anymore. Lucifer had him, and he wouldn't let go, the truth that couldn't be unlearned.

The key to immortality is procreation.

Sam didn't have time to wonder how he'd forgotten that before the darkness closed around him.

--_**December 2013-Woods  
**_  
Sam was used to waking up to some ruckus or other. Usually it was loud music that only made sense as the soundtrack to whatever he'd been dreaming and made for all kinds of awkward once he was awake. He said 'dreaming' because it didn't seem possible for him to have nightmares. Wasn't he supposed to be the scariest thing that went bump in the night? Anyway, he didn't usually remember them, just figured from the accompaniment that they weren't exactly bedtime stories.

There was no music this time, but it was raucous all the same. Growling, snapping, snarling, and the tent shook like a stampede was going on around it. Sam wasn't doing that. He was still only half awake when he reached over for one of Dean's shoes to throw at the wall, but not too sleepy to notice Dean wasn't beside him anymore.

"Shit..."

His long body coiled and uncoiled like a viper in his dive for the open tent flap, no sooner cleared the opening and stood to full height when something barreled into his shins and nearly knocked him over. The animal, still just a flash of thick grey fur and beady eyes, recoiled with a yelp, and the entire camp fell silent.

Around him a dozen or more pairs of eyes tracked his every movement -- wolves, coyotes, foxes in close, and farther out, a mountain lion, bobcats, and bear -- all lay down at his feet with a collective whimper, just the glint of moonlight off their teeth and the ragged panting of breath.

No sign of Dean.

Sam looked each of the animals in the eye, all of which woofed once and laid head upon paws in submission, taking it one step further and rolling over if Sam persisted.

"Dean!"

No answer, but the mismatched pack all jerked their heads up in response to something else stirring in the distance. From the tree line behind them, branches crashed together, the brittle frozen ends snapping and raining down like the debris from an explosion. A swathe cut through the forest, bearing down on them, and Sam watched it come, unafraid.

Suddenly, a jack rabbit zigged out of the undergrowth at full speed, too focused on the peril from above to notice what it was running into. A horned owl swooped into the clearing, talons outstretched at the exact moment one of the wolves pounced on the rabbit, sending the owl veering sharply upward. A squeal and sharp crack, and the rabbit went limp in the wolf's mouth.

Long stringers of reddened saliva dangled from the canine's loose jowls as it breathed around the carcass, eyes locked with Sam's. As if reaching a decision, the wolf slunk up to him, back concave behind its shoulder blades, belly practically dragging on the ground, and laid the rabbit down at Sam's feet. An offering.

"Suffer the little children to come unto me," Sam chided, "just what I always wanted."

Without breaking eye contact with the wolf, Sam called out, "Dean!"

For a second, silence hung ominous over them like so much clouded animal breath curling over his shins. Then, a low collective growl erupted from the pack followed by another rainstorm of tree debris from overhead. "A tree?" Sam chided, still trying to focus on which one Dean was hiding in. "You really climbed a tree instead of just getting back in the tent?"

"You told me not to smoke inside," Dean snapped, followed by a mumbled, "and the zipper was stuck." Sam finally made out the shape of his brother perched in the top of a leaning birch tree directly above him.

"You can come down. They won't hurt you."

Dean thudded to the ground, landed on his knees, and then staggered to an upright position.

"Get in the fucking tent."

Dean didn't argue, but his footsteps faltered after only a few strides. By then, Sam could hear his teeth chattering, the pained hiss of his breath. Turning his back on the wolf and the rest of the menagerie, Sam had only a second to react. Dean teetered and fell forward.

His hair and skin glistened with frost, and he was so cold Sam was surprised he didn't shatter. Some of his hair did, maybe an eyelash or two as his head fell against Sam's chest, but Sam caught him, and nothing else touched the ground until they were both inside once more.

--

　  
If the last time he woke up, it was to whispered voices that sent a thrill of hope through him, this time was, at least, a bitter disappointment, and at most horrifying. Lucky for Dean he'd lost perspective on the horrific just as surely as if those nerves had been cut and never regenerated. He wasn't nearly as disturbed about waking up in the middle of a dogpile as he should have been, considering the dogs were wolves, and their low growling rumbled through his sinuses like badly adjusted bass. It was its own kind of thrill but not hope.

"If I get fleas..."

"You'll what? Because you might want to take a little inventory before you decide to get in a pissing contest. Stay out in the cold long enough... things start to fall off." Sam was growling a little himself, and in his half conscious state, Dean wasn't sure whether it was a snarl or just the scrape of words through a sadistic grin.

He sat up abuptly, his upper body dragged stock straight by the sudden movement of his arm. The rush of relief at finding out he still had all his... extremities was short-lived. The mass of fur around him scattered and then closed in, a mammoth jaw locking around his throat with a strength that cut off his breath in the span of time between one and the next.

Dean's hands clawed into the neck of the offending wolf, his thumbs in the soft spot between jaw bone and up into the sensitive tissue under its tongue. His feet kicked, everything below his rib cage twisting, and everything above stock still. It was as much instinct as every bit of advice Dad ever gave him-- _Better to go still when bitten. Pulling away only rips the wound--_ but as his lungs burned with asphyxiation, his resolved ebbed away.

"Drop it!"

A long, cold snarl, tongue lapping against his skin, and the vice broke.

Dean rolled onto his side, coughing, one hand propping him up and the other massaging at the bruised flesh of his throat. He peered up under half-open eyelids, still squinting through tear-eyes, and glared at Sam. "It?" he grumbled, his own voice now the only growl.

"Why mince words? I'm pretty sure he doesn't speak English?"

"The wolf's a 'he' and I'm just an it?"

"I'm sorry. I don't deal with animals much. But all those trainers on Animal Planet say, 'leave it,' when they want a dog to let go. I guess it just popped out."

Dean glowered into the tent floor, too exhausted to argue further.

"Hey," Sam offered, "Could've been worse. I could've said, 'that'll do, Pig.'"

Dean was not amused. "What the hell are they even doing in here?"

"You were freezing. I figured the fur and the body heat..."

"So, what? You played Timmy to their Lassie? How's that even possible? Your psychic mojo works on animals, too?"

Sam shrugged, holding out a mug of steaming coffee from the thermos at his side. "Pretty much works that way with everything. Whatever Sammy wants, Sammy gets."

Dean detected something like remorse in his voice but didn't believe it was genuine. "Not if I can help it."

Sam huffed and looked down. His fingers twined in the ruff of the wolf's neck, massaging the animal down flat on the ground from its wary head-up stance.

"That's kind of the point, Dean."

Maybe nearly freezing to death and then almost having his throat ripped out by a large carnivore made him slow on the uptake, but after a few more sips of coffee, Dean looked up again, eyes darting between Sam and the floor. "You're not controlling me..." His voice went flat at the end, not sure if he was asking or stating a fact. He didn't feel controlled, but maybe that was part of the 'charm'.

"I try not to."

"Why?"

For a second, the bangs fell out of Sam's eyes, and it was Sam looking back at him, something both pensive and bitterly ironic in the crease of his forehead and squint of his eyes. "What would be the fun in that?" When Dean didn't reply, Sam said, "If I wanted a slave, I could have anyone."

Dean squinted across the short distance between them, his eyes only daring go as far up as Sam's chin. "So, what do you want? Revenge? For not having your back?"

Sam didn't answer.

"For leaving you alone?"

"What do _you_ want, Dean? I mean, this situation is less than ideal, but I would think you'd be happy here. Isn't this what you always wanted? Just you and me, together? Forever?"

Dean set his coffee down hard enough it would have sloshed if there'd been more than a sip or two left. "First, nothing's meant to stay the same forever. Second, you're not you and I'm not me. Us being here..." he paused, swallowing against something bitter but colder than coffee. "It goes against everything we worked for, everything I wanted. It's wrong, Sam."

Sam stood, hunched over under the dome of the tent, opened the flap, and gestured the wolves out. He hesitated at the opening, shoulders slouched. Maybe Dean only saw a tiny puff of white from Sam's lips because he wanted to. "Funny, you say you're not you, and I'm not me, but that's exactly what Dean would say."

He stalked out into the morning, and Dean watched him go. Shaking his head and reaching for his coffee, he jerked his hand back when a cold nose pressed into it, followed by a warm tongue.

"What the..."

A half-grown wolf cub slunk out from behind him, probably last spring's get, all big ears and paws, not quite proportionate and clumsy in its movements. "What, didn't you hear that?" Dean nodded toward the open flap. "What Sammy wants, Sammy gets." The cub woofed and plopped down behind Dean. It's tail thumped as he shot questioning glances upward. "Nah, never mind," Dean smirked. "I wouldn't go out there either. Fucking freezing." Besides, he'd have never made it into that tree the night before if the critter hadn't mostly pulled and then pushed him to it. He patted the cub as it curled up into a ball to sleep. "Way to stick to your guns. You're a better man than I, my friend."

And he meant it.

--

When Sam slunk back in, what was left of the rabbit from the previous night roasted and shredded into two stainless steel bowls, he wasn't willing to call it a peace offering. He'd said it himself, what would be the fun in that? Brothers bicker. They pick and tease, call each other's bluff. He preferred Dean calling him Sasquatch and trading insults over any eager-to-please minion. He didn't bother to consider the paradox in that. If he wanted contrary and got contrary by forfeit, well, that was just convenient, not backdoor mind control. It wasn't his fault the universe seemed to revolve around him.

It became difficult to maintain that perspective when he went back inside and found Dean asleep with his head on one scraggly looking wolf cub that should have made it's exeunt along with the rest. Dean was invited to disobey. Nothing else was allowed.

The wolf whined and sat up when Sam entered, jarring Dean from his sleep. Dean stirred and looked up, bleary-eyed. "What's'a matter, Cas?" Catching a glimpse of Sam, he said, "Oh, don't let the boogey man scare you. He's all bark and no bite."

"Why would I be afraid of...?"

"I was talking to the wolf," Dean mumbled, reaching for the bowl of meat. He took one look inside it, pushed the meal around a little with his fingers and then set it down on the ground. "Here you go, boy. Sam made you dinner. I told you he wasn't all bad."

"You've gotta be kidding me."

"Isn't that what you want? Entertainment?"

Sam bit back something uglier than he intended to admit to. With a sigh, he said, "Cas? You named it after an angel?"

"He's got the same eyes. Tell me that's a coincidence."

"It's a coincidence."

"And you're jealous."

"Am not."

"Are so."

Sam opened the tent flap, intending to gesture the... CAS out, but Dean put his arm over the animal's back. "I'm keeping him."

"You can't keep him."

"Why not?"

"Because it's a wild animal."

"Technically so are you. Anyway, you have a pet. I want one, too."

"A pet? You don't mean...? Right. Doc." Sam sighs, and slumps back on the floor. "Fine, then you two eat up. It's a long walk back to the cabin. I'm calling the hunting trip off."

"Why? Because I got a little hypothermia? I'm fine. I can still hunt."

"I'm sure you can, but I doubt we'll get within shooting distance of anything worth eating now that everything smells like wolf."

"I have news for you. You already smelled bad. I wasn't going to say anything, but the cigarette smoke was the only thing making this place tolerable."

"Fuck you," Sam said, but he couldn't force enough animosity into it to squelch the smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"In your dreams."

"Wouldn't you like to know." Dean took a second to register the comment and then faltered in his constant scratching of Cas's neck, lips pulling together abruptly.

"Dude, that's sick."

--

Dean woke the next morning to whispers again, a subtle reminder that, despite spending the night shoulder-to-shoulder with Sam, talking and trading insults into the wee hours, they were not brothers on a camping trip, partaking of some rite of passage into manhood. The passage was an endless tunnel with no light at the end, and there was no going back. He couldn't tell what they were saying, but his skin tingled, flared red with growing intensity around the growing collection of runes he'd carved into it. "I'm going as fast as I can," he whispered back, but the answer was head-to-toe spasm that curled him over his stomach, sent his hand scrabbling for the can opener and the can of beans Sam had put out for breakfast.

When Sam woke up, he had cold beans in a bowl waiting for him at his pillow, and Dean had a fresh track of runes up his left shin bone. Dean pretended not to notice when Sam gave the beans to Cas.

--

Dean was ready when the ache settled in this time, only this time they were halfway back to camp, still knee deep in snow and making slow progress. When his hands started to shake and burn, he shoved them deep into the snow, flinging a clump out to Cas who snapped it out of the air. It was a good game to pass the time and kept Sam from noticing anything out of the ordinary. Also kept him from shuddering through the realization that this fucked up existence had found its own level of ordinary, and he was allowing it.

He should've known better than to leave Sam out of the loop. The thing about having the world revolve around him? He didn't take well to be lefting out.

The first snowball hit Dean between the shoulder blades as he reached down to grab another mittful between his burning fingers. At least, he assumed it hit between the shoulder blades. It was hard to tell from the way the pain radiated outward, his entire back spasming with such force as to knock the wind out of him. The snowball he threw in retaliation was intended to have much more heat behind it than it did. Way to add insult to injury.

Sam must've taken Dean's panting as laughter, because he cackled something like, "You giant pussy!" and followed it up with a second snowball, this time to the shoulder.

Dean seethed, figuratively and literally, white hot flaring down his arm and through his chest. He fired back, teeth set firmly against each other. His shot went wide, and he hissed, "Knock it off."

"Make me," Sam laughed, the air white around him as he knocked into low-hanging branches, diving for the cover of the nearest tree trunk before throwing back.

This one hit Dean on the side of the head, and the pain drove him over the edge, half-mad as he staggered forward, lobbing snowball after snowball, most of which weren't packed and disintegrated within a few feet of leaving his hand. Sam continued to laugh as Dean bore down on him, arms thrown up over his face so just his mouth was visible. By the time Dean got close enough to put some real sting behind the attack, the whispers in his hears scraped over the inside of his skull like white water over a dam.

Laughing, Sam shouted, "Stop!"

"Make me," Dean grit out, a challenge. _Make me stop. Make it all. Just. Stop.  
_  
The next barrage of hits pelted Sam's face in rapid succession, first silencing him with its intensity and then forcing him to close his mouth. "I said, make me!"

Sam did. He kicked out, the flat of his foot impacting Dean's thigh hard enough that the whole leg spasmed and Dean fell backward into the snow.

Cas pounced, licking at Dean's face, and to his embarrassment, Dean yelped. His entire body shook, back arching up off the ground as the last of his breath whooshed out.

He fought to draw it back in, but his chest locked down. Everything burned with such intensity he wondered why he couldn't smell it or hear the crackling, couldn't even scream against the grasp his own body held him in.

"Geez," Sam huffed. He stalked over, shaking the snow from his hair and out of the front of his coat. "You're a dick, you know that?"

Beside him, Cas growled.

"Dean?" A second later, "Dean!" Sam knelt in the snow, trying and failing to press Dean flat to the ground with his hand on Dean's sternum. "What's...?"

Like Dean knew what the hell was going on. It wasn't like he had any experience being a science experiment. He did know that Sam wasn't helping. Just weight of his hand sent lightning bolts crackling through Dean's bones, the white noise in his head flaring to deafening proportions. "Nnnnggghhh!"

It was the most scream he could manage with his mouth clamped shut.

Sam fumbled with Dean's collar, unzipping his coat and pulling it back, each click of the zipper pinging in his head like pea gravel against his temples. He had no control over himself, felt the rush of warmth a second before the stench of urine assaulted his nasal passages. His vision blurred, either from oxygen deprivation or tears, and he didn't consider where his hand was going before he felt it clasp over the hilt of his knife. _Makeitstop, makeitstop, makeitstop...  
_  
Sam's lips were moving, but Dean couldn't make out what he was saying, nothing he said up until the final, desperate, "NOOOO!" as the knife flashed through the air.

It plunged into his chest, and if Dean had been thinking clearly, he'd have known that was a mistake before he made it. Too many contracting muscles, too much bone. Gut would've been the wiser move. As it was, the knife only went in a couple of inches before Dean lost his grip on it.

"Make it stop, make it stop, make it stopstopstopstopstop." Dean didn't know if he was speaking aloud or only in his head, but when he finally found the knife again, Sam's hand was already on it. The world slowed to a crawl, the fork in the road suddenly obvious as Sam's hand trembled over the hilt, each vibration another wave of agony Dean couldn't breathe through. God, if Sam pulled out the knife... The prospect of going on another second, of being poked and prodded down the mountain... "Please... pleasepleaseplease." Pulling out whatever last bit of free will he still had, Dean locked his hand over Sam's and forced his eyes to stay open and fixed. "Please. Fix me."

Sam's chin quivered a second before the knife plunged beneath their hands and into Dean's heart. It pulsed only once or twice before it went still. Dean's eyesight was the last thing to go, but not before he saw Sam turn and vomit into the snow. Not before he saw the curl of steam rise up from it.

--_**December 2013, Cabin-The Next Day  
**_  
　  
"What do you mean, _I'm_ affecting him? I'm purposely trying _not_ to affect him."

"You affect everything just by being. You're like a giant tuning fork vibrating into the ether. You set the key and the tone of whatever's around you." For a sick, evil, bastard, Doc had a knack for being right.

"So how am I causing these spells?"

"Your blood's in him, and it's tuned in to you. His whole body's like one continuous exposed nerve while his new nervous system's still being constructed. Imagine his blood boiling over a raw nail bed. He might as well have acid in his veins."

"So... a transfusion, then. Re-perfuse with a lower concentration of my blood."

"With what? Have you got another donor lying around here?"

Hindsight being twenty-twenty, he suddenly understood exactly why he left old man Carson parked in that snow bank behind the shed. "Yeah... yeah, I do."

"The popsicle?"

"Dean always did like the red ones."

--

The next time Dean opened his eyes, Sam was leaning over him, a scalpel in hand, retracing the line of scars up Dean's forearm. Still groggy, either from the seizure, the death and resurrection, or loss of blood, he could do nothing but watch the dark, near-black stream eek out his vein and into the bucket on the floor.

"Hey," Sam said, his mouth pulled into a straight line as he concentrated on the task. "Doc thinks my blood's causing the seizures. Lucky for you, I've been keeping some one ice."

Dean's stomach lurched, the only part of him that seemed capable of movement as his head lolled to the side. It stopped lurching and cramped into a full-on retch when Dean spied old Carson dangling from the ceiling on a meat hook through his lower legs. The old guy's neck gaped open, blood pinging into a stainless steel tub. Smelly Cat was poised over the bowl eyeing his own reflection with a Cheshire grin.

Sam tipped Dean's head to the side as he spit up nothing but yellow foam, wiped away the mess with a corner of a dish towel. "Yeah, I know it's pretty gross. But the blood wouldn't pump out with no heartbeat. Once he thawed, I had to kinda... well, squeeze it out." A chuckle, mirthless and cold. "I imagine it's a little like stretching cat gut into tennis racquet strings. But it'll be worth it if we stop the seizures, and Doc says we can introduce my blood gradually once your nervous system calms down again."

Cas sniffed at the bucket of blood beside him and whimpered before backing away. He licked Dean's face once and laid down in the corner. Luckily, Dean passed out before the transfusion began.

--

Dean had his second attack two weeks later, exactly one day after he stopped leaking over-heparinized blood from all his orifices and tear ducts. It was just long enough after the first to convince himself and Sam that it wasn't going to happen again. Long enough for Sam to stop watching him out of the corners of his eyes and moving to the far end of the room whenever Dean dragged himself in, Cas skulking at his heels. Long enough for Sam to yank out the wiring along the walls and ceiling to stop the speakers blaring melancholic ballads at all odd hours of the day and night. No way he was thinking anything along the lines of Toto's "I Will Remember." Had to have been Dean.

This time, it went on for nearly half an hour as Sam pulled at his hair and paced the room, unwilling to touch Dean and make it worse, unable to watch him suffer unaided.

Finally Sam cut Dean's throat, whether to let out the tainted blood or just to stop him screaming, it was hard to tell.

--

"Your blood is a living thing. It's taken root in his marrow." Sam really wished he'd spent more time on the voice synthesizer. He hadn't ever realized how far the sound of an actual human voice went to making him feel... well, human, and not alone.

"So... a transfusion won't work. The taint will just come back."

"So it would seem."

"If I can't make him stop reacting to me, then maybe I can... I dunno... remove myself from the equation." He paced, fully aware Doc's peripheral vision wasn't good enough to follow him from one end of he porch to the other but still amused in a distracting way to know the eyes would try to follow anyway. Simple pleasure was all he had when all his complex plans continued to fall through. "The... darkness... evil... whatever it is... it follows me. So, if I keep Dean away from me..."

"How do you intend to do that? He's like an infant. He can't take care of himself, and you can't set him loose on the world."

Sam shrugged then glared at the crackle of speakers from inside. The damned things insisted on working despite not being connected to any source of power.

_This is a test of the emergency broadcast system... this is only a test...  
_  
He grinned and paused, square in the refrigerator door for the first time since he stepped onto the porch. "Ya hear that? Tornado coming."

Doc protested with a roll of his eyes. "It's not tornado seas..." The refrigerator door slammed.

"Dean! Storm's comin'!" He refrained from saying, "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too," but the sound system was already streaming "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" before he kicked the cat and silenced it.

--_**December 2013--A Week Before Christmas  
**_  
_So, I look to my Eskimo friend...  
_  
Once upon an Apocalypse, Lucifer rose. That should've been the end, but it was only another beginning.

In the beginning there were two brothers--one bound by fate, the other by destiny, and both intending to stop the Apocalypse at all cost. No price too high. No sacrifice they wouldn't make.

Good intentions make for great stories, and this one? Well, it got messy, and it stayed that way all the way to Hell. No surprise there. Everyone knows the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

_I look to my Eskimo friend...  
_  
But what paves the road out? Blood? Sweat? Tears? Sacrifice? An angel in wolf's clothing? My Eskimo friend?

"..."

"Fuck. I'm gonna kill that cat."  
"Saaaam! Let me out!" Dean wasn't above begging. It was pretty much all he had left. He couldn't even pound on the door for effect, not with the mattress fastened onto it. He gave up rapping on the rafters with a broom handle when Sam turned off the lights to stop Dean from carving on himself. Joke was on Sam, though. The friggin' runes glowed in the dark. At least, they did when Sam was within a hundred yards, which was most of the time. Antichrist or not, he still hovered like a mother hen.

Dean had been passing the time, and distracting himself from the pain of his growing collection of skin hieroglyphics, by changing his life story into fairy tales in his mind. In his defense, it was a lot better fit to fairy tales than to gospels ala Chuck the Prophet. Hans Christian Andersen and the Grimm Brothers were creepy mother fuckers who, as far as Dean could tell, didn't actually think there was a moral to the story. Defeatist bastards who traumatized little kids. (So, he was still bitter from having read "The Little Matchstick Girl" in the first grade.) That made sense to him, more than the idea of future generations using him as the needle on some moral compass. (He still hadn't decided which direction he was pointing.)

But he'd been stuck in the same place for at least an hour now, that fucking Damien Rice song on repeat outside the door, and no matter how hard he tried to make sense of his own life and predicament, he kept coming back to "What the fuck is up with the Eskimo?"

"It's for your own good." So, Sam was still listening. Dean had begun to wonder if maybe he was the pet rabbit ol' Trashcan Man had kept as a pet and starved to death in its cage before Captain Tripps made him go all Finger of God on Randal Flagg's ass.

"It's cold down here. There's frost on the walls."

"Which would you prefer, Dean, a little cold or another seizure?" Whichever brought death first. He didn't say it out loud, but it was on the tip of his tongue.

"I'd prefer _you_ to live in the basement."

"My house. My rules."

"It's not your house. You stole it."

"Like I said, my rules make it my house. Are you hungry?"

Dean let his head fall back against the wall, the backs of his legs aching where they hung over the metal frame of the foldaway cot. His hands trembled once, and the radio slid from his grasp. He heard it clamber to the concrete floor, hated the way his heart pounded the whole while he scrambled around for it in the dark.

"Dean? Hungry?" The radio crackled, helping him zero in on it. The frame of the cot wasn't made for someone his size to crawl under, and he bruised his ribs trying to reach just that one inch closer to the crackling static. Backing out of the tight space with a curse, he latched onto the cot and jerked it away from the wall with a deafening scrape.

"Going once, going twice..."

He found the radio and pressed the talk button, ashamed of the way his breath panted in and out of his chest. "No. Not hungry. Just... I'm about out of smokes." He was out of just about _everything _he had in him.

"I told you to ration them out."

"Sam..." he huffed into the damp shroud of air around him, too aware of the way it sucked the warmth from his breath and left it stale and used up. "Please..." Dean was many things but a quitter? Not even part of his vocabulary. Dean was many things but a quitter? Not even part of his vocabulary.

"I'll send 'em down the vent. You know you've gone through most of Carson's stash. You're going to have to give them up eventually."

"Yeah, story of my life. I'll cross that bridge when I get to it, or jump off, whichever works." The vent scraped above him, followed a second later by the scrape of cellophane down the shaft. It plunked into his lap with a satisfying thud, and he had one out between his lips before he realized he'd dropped his lighter somewhere. "Figures."

Panic welled up inside him, manifesting as a deep-seated itch under his skin. His fingers twisted into claws, the tracks of which were already carved into his forearms and the tops of his thighs. "Fuck!" He hefted the radio overhead, set to chuck it against the wall, (It was the third one to date,) then thought better of it. "You better be feeding my fucking dog!"

Sam was halfway through arguing that Cas wasn't a dog when the radio smashed, bits of plastic and circuitry raining down and scattering across the floor for him to crunch over later. Ah, well, at least it would cover the sound of dead cockroaches underfoot. By the time _that_ image branded itself on his frontal lobe, Dean found his lighter and didn't give a rat's ass.

In the darkness conceded defeat was bright as day.

--  
Something was up with Dean's... Cas. The critter had absolutely no Sam sensitivity whatsoever. At first, he'd surmised the cub's resistance was out of some strange attachment to Dean, but that wasn't only it. The other wolves knew something was up with him, too. They didn't welcome Cas into their fold, though he most likely had come with them. Instead they growled and snapped, kept him pushed off to the side, made him eat last. Not that much had wandered through the dooryard lately for them to eat.

Maybe it was jealousy. The rest of the pack fawned at Sam's feet and cowered before him when he went out for wood or supplies from the shed, but he didn't pay them any attention. Cas spent his days curled up at the cellar door, closer to Sam by default than any of the others.

Or maybe he was just your typical juvenile delinquent. Sam snickered to himself at the thought, imagined the low growls of the leaders to translate into something like the sendoff Dad gave him when he left for school.

At any rate, he'd been eating more of Dean's food than Dean. And Sam never had to wonder where Dean was in the cellar below, because Cas tracked his movement through the floor, nose to the ground, big ears lopped forward at the tips.

Sam made sure to stay on the opposite side of the house. Sam didn't like that the cub had no regard for him at all, but he respected it. He had a spot in his heart for the loners and freaks of the world.

Besides, he was more fun to talk to than Doc, especially when Dean decided to hold a grudge and cut off radio communications. Though he'd prefer Dean to a pet. Cas mostly ignored him. Dean was more fun, just the right side of infuriatingly contrary to keep things interesting. If only he wasn't such a sensitive SOB.

--  
"C'mon, Dean, it's not that hard. Just take your turn. Go ahead, "I spy with my little eye..." Sam paused and waited, but Dean didn't fill in the blanks, so he continued, "something in the color..."

"Black, Sam. Black. It's dark down here."

"I turned the power back on ages ago."

"Fine, so besides the space heater and the dehumidifier light, which I'm pretty sure means the tank is full, by the way, it's dark down here."

"Fine, then I'll go... I spy with my little eye, something in the color... brown."

"Oh, that's so much better than black."

"I call it like I see it."

"Let me guess. Is it the wood floor?"

"No."

"Wooden walls?"

"No."

"Rafters, doors, table chairs, cupboards, spoons, ceiling...?"

"No, and you're not playing right."

"I don't want to play 'I Spy' Sam."

"I was just trying to pass the time."

"When am I getting out of here?"

He almost said, "I don't know," but changed it to, "When I say so," instead. The first might sound too much like, 'I miss you.' Because Dean was a sap and would hear that, not because Sam actually did.

But hell, if he was any good at being alone, they wouldn't have been in that mess.

--

Dean didn't know exactly what Sam was trying to accomplish by locking him down in the hole, but he had a clue it wasn't working.

The whispers were fainter down here, swallowed by the dark or the humidity, or just the distance, but they'd been there the whole time, gradually getting louder. Some nights he slept with the radio keyed under his pillow so the static drowned them out.

The downhill slide was slower, but there was no doubt where things were heading. His hands had been shaking for days, and even Sam's voice sliced through his head like a blow torch. His sheets stayed soaked with sweat, his body trembling with cold.

But hey, what Sam didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

Of course, it was starting to hurt Dean a whole lot. He gave up trying to sleep altogether, because he had a door to build before he bit, and at least fifty more glyphs to transfer from his memory to his flesh.

--

Dean smashed their last radio on a Tuesday. Sam was already at wit's end. That damned wolf had been whining and scratching at the floor all day, and nothing Sam did, short of wringing his scraggly neck made him stop.

"Dammit, Dean! That was the last one," he shouted. "Don't make me come down there."

That's when the screaming started, followed by the howling. Cas ran to the cellar door and began digging at the frame frantically, a low howl eeking from his throat.

Sam tossed Cas aside roughly enough to make the animal yelp as it collided with the wall behind him. He opened the door to find it pitch dark on the other side and flipped on the switch. The act was followed immediately by a high-keening moan.

Dean was at the bottom of the stairs, pale and slippery, lips bruised from biting them, some of the bruises yellow and old. The runes that'd been confined to his limbs had made their way up his neck and over his jaw, and Sam didn't have time to wonder how Dean managed that in the dark. "Dean!"

When Dean looked up at him, his eyes were ringed red, the only other color in his face the circles around his nostrils where he'd smashed his nose against the floor.

"Do it!" Dean was past begging.

"No!" Sam stooped to the floor and heaved Dean over his shoulder, ignoring the way his touch made Dean flinch away. "No, this is..." Sam searched for something to say, "it's like a bad tooth. It always hurts the worst before it dies." He dropped Dean onto the cot, wincing at the smell, not even a rustle from the heavy, sodden sheets. "We're gonna wait it out." Truth was, he'd been wondering whether his blood changed any other properties of the serum. Was it really an immortality serum still, or would Dean run out of lives like a cat?

For all his uncontrolled thrashing, Dean's grip was strong when it wrapped in Sam's shirt collar and held tight, his breath fetid in Sam's face. "We?"

"Yeah, yeah," Sam pried Dean's hands away, resisted the urge to tie them down, but only because he had nothing to tie them with. "We'll wait it out together. Just like old times, right?"

But it wasn't like old times. Back then, Dean cared more about keeping up appearances and not scaring Sam than about letting on how bad things actually were. So not the case anymore.

It took him about an hour to cave and go back upstairs. He listened for another thirty minutes, felt his own throat scraped raw and closing shut from screaming.

It only took him two minutes once he made up his mind, to find the gun and end it. Forty-five seconds of that was spent fighting off Cas.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** Don't own. No harm intended. Fair use only.

"It shouldn't be taking this long." Doc didn't sound any more human with his head in the fish aquarium, air pump gurgling over his larynx for effect. (What, Sam had needed another experiment to keep himself occupied while he waited for Dean to get better?) It took Sam two days to figure out how to translate glub, glub, glub, but the oxygenated solution in the water seemed to be working wonders on Doc's complexion, so Sam left him in the tank a couple hours a day at least.

"Dean's just stubborn."

"No one can hold it off that long. And why would he even want to? This is obviously less pleasant for him than anyone." The last few words were nearly lost as Doc snapped his jaws over one of Smelly Cat's prodding paws. The cat yowled, spit, and fell into the tank, nearly losing the end of its tail to the same snapping teeth before scampering away to some tune Sam didn't recognize.

"Wanna bet?" Sam didn't honestly believe this setback was setting him back farther than Dean. He was pretty sure Dean gave up his afterlife for this one.

"He's just... resistant. For some reason, the process just isn't going to completion. There's a limiting factor we don't know about."

"So, you're saying his new nervous system and his old one are trying to operate the same meat suit."

"It's making him hypersensitive. He feels too much."

"But he only needs one system to function, right?"

"Yes, but short of spinal dissection, there's no way to... you wouldn't." The aquarium pump fizzed louder in the silence that followed, like a pot of water boiling over onto the burner.

"Funny," Sam said. "I really haven't found anything I wouldn't do."

--

Dean woke without relief, not even a moment's reprieve, and this time things were worse. He wasn't in the basement anymore. The lights from overhead seared into his skull even through the shade of his half-closed eyelashes. He shivered uncontrollably, his entire body a rolling throb against the steady, solid resistance of the butcher block countertop. An attempt to roll to the side and find a softer position found him tied down, thin hemp scraping a channel in the flesh around his arms and legs.

"You need to hold still." Sam's voice behind was stilted and cold, and from the stench of alcohol in the air, Dean suspected not sober.

"What are you doing?"

"Fixing you."

"I don't want to be fixed."

"What do you want?"

He didn't know. Somewhere in all the months of being unliving and undead, he'd lost sight of his life's purpose, the drive he had when there was a road ahead of him and not just pain and snow and more of the same. For a second the chill of the countertop muted the throbbing between his temples, and on an exhale, he said, "Give me back my necklace."

He heard the knife stop halfway out of its sheath, a stutter in Sam's breath.

"No. It's not over yet."

Right. Things were just getting good.

Dean screamed when the knife bit into his flesh, high on his back above his shoulder blades. He continued to scream as it sliced deep alongside his spinal column.

"Yeah, it sucks, I know," Sam hissed. "I'd give you something to bite down on, but I need you to tell me when it works. I don't want to take too much."

Dean didn't get to ask, 'too much what?' Instead, his mouth flooded with something metallic and sharp like ozone after a thunderstorm, and his entire body bowed back against his bonds.

"Almost," snap, snap, snap, "almost."

Dean recognized the sickening sound of his muscles and sinews giving way. The jolt when the blade cut into his spinal column was worse than getting electrocuted. The scream became a long, drawn out grunt, eyes rolling back in his head.

_Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you and all we've been through!  
_  
"Tell me when..."

_Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out_.

Snap.

And then it was over. No hot. No cold. No pain, just numb all over, and he collapsed onto the counter, panting. And for once, Smelly Cat was playing _his_ song.

_Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out.  
_  
"Dean..." He got the impression it wasn't the first time Sam called his name, still he couldn't bring himself to answer. "Dean... How do you feel?"

"It doesn't hurt anymore."

_It's Hell when you're around_.

"Good."

It was anything but.

_It's Hell when you're around.  
_  
But at least he could think again. So, he did.

--

When his hands quit shaking enough for him to hold the needle in his grip, he meticulously etched into his skin carving out memorized symbols and shapes, long intricate lines, calculated intersections and angles. With his forefinger and thumb he pushed on the chamber of ink chasing black biro ink out to the tip, ready to drop and seep into his rune.

"Dude, do'u fall in?"

He worked at night, sometimes during the day, anywhere he could catch a break on his own, even while in the bathroom, rarely made time for conversation.

"Two more minutes, and I'm coming in after you."

Morning, noon and night. Until Sam inevitably interrupted. Little brothers and Antichrists were both just huge pains in his ass.

He carved, bled and suffered avoiding Sam's radar, but it would be all worth it in the end.

The end was closing in.

Life settled after that. It wasn't hard to be easy-going when he didn't feel anything at all. He didn't need to hear Sam's drawn-out explanation about how his new nervous system took over all his necessary functions, just didn't receive tactile input. Explaining it didn't make it okay.

The air was still acrid with the stench of burned flesh. At least his nose still worked. His tongue was as useless as his fingertips, except for the part where he could still use it to swallow and talk. Not that he had much worthwhile to say.

"Why did you do that?" Sam scowled at him, wrapping Dean's burned hands over the charred, circular patterns of the stove burner.

"Why not?"

"I don't want you to."

"Why not?"

"Because I said so." Sam finished the bandage and stalked away. Only Cas remained, his head pillowed on Dean's foot.

--

"You need to eat."

"I'm not hungry."

"You are. You just don't feel it."

"It doesn't taste good."

"Everyone's a critic."

The third time Dean dropped his fork, unable to grasp it with his bandaged hands, Sam shoveled it full of macaroni and cheese and pressed it to his lips hard enough to clank against Dean's front teeth. "Eat."

Dean did.

--  
　  
Sam always used the straight edge. He couldn't be sure, but Dean seemed to like the way the light played off it. "Chin up," he instructed, and Dean obeyed, eyes darting to the long razor for only a second before they fixed on the far wall once more.

Sam didn't mind the extra work. Sure, Dean had lost some of his fine motor skills, the 'feel' that let him handle delicate operations. Sure, he didn't look much like Dean anymore, what with his hair coming in black now, along with his fingernails, the white eyes, all the tattoos and scars. But it was still Dean. And there were worse things Sam could be doing. He didn't mind the distraction.

"Why do you bother?"

Sam didn't even mind that it didn't even sound like Dean anymore.

Sam smirked, scraping the razor down Dean's throat like a sculptor. He had his "cleanliness is next to godliness" retort prepared, but instead he said, "It's the only way I know it's still you under there."

"When can I have my necklace back?"

The razor slipped, long dark line of black trickling down and welling along Dean's collarbone.

"I lost it."

"Oh."

Sam finished the shave and left the haircut for another day. Before he stalked out to the porch, he offered, "Need a smoke?"

"Nope."

See? Dean was still contrary as ever. Just like old times.

Only not.

He didn't even notice the sweat beading on his brow until he stepped outside and was blinded by the cloud of his own breath.

"Huh."

--

Sam took crooked appraisal of the glop on his plate and thought the Boy King, as he'd been called, probably deserved better cuisine. But he hadn't been packing for extravagance when he planned this whole thing all those months ago. Funny, all that time in hiding, extrapolating and planning, toying with his power-- a little manipulation here, pestilence there, the world his canvas to paint however he chose-- he'd never really felt like a king. A king had a kingdom, an army, a castle, a moat. He had... whatever was on hand, his influence kept tightly leashed by coming into it all a little too late to matter. No kingdom. No army. No throne.

But now he had Dean, and sure, things had started out... rocky, but he was better now. He was. They were better, if just a little codependent. Hell, that was nothing new, anyway. Things were a lot easier now that Dean had evened out. Sure, there were some complications from rewiring his whole nervous system. Dean stapled himself to the porch the night before while stringing Christmas lights. Christmas lights. Yeah, Sam had to make some allowances. To be honest, he was more surprised Carson had lights in the attic than he was that Dean wanted to put them up. But Dean had a degloved thumb held together with fishing line to remind them both that people with no sense of touch shouldn't be allowed to play with sharp instruments, or fire, or ice, acid, base, or anything absorbed through the skin.

No big deal, though. Sam was getting pretty good at spotting the potential dangers. Speaking of which... "Here, let me get that." Seriously, Sam didn't know what he was thinking putting out the glass tumblers when they had perfectly good plastic cups in the kitchen. He made sure Dean had a good grip on the glass of water before pushing his chair away from the table and going to the cupboard to get one. Better safe than sorry. Sooner or later, they'd run out of fishing line.

The pot of chipped beef he'd made with dried beef and powdered milk looked almost as appetizing as the runny instant potatoes he'd made to pour it over. Definitely not fit for a king, but it seemed to be Dean's favorite, judging by the noises Dean was making behind him. Lucky for him, Sam had accidentally made it twice this week. He had more important things to worry about than meal planning.

He picked the blue plastic tumbler out of the dish rack, leaving the pink one, because Dean hated it, and watched Dean eat as he made his way back to the table. Dinner conversation was pretty much dead these days, since Dean ate with his face practically in his plate to counteract his tendency to drop his fork halfway to his mouth. And Sam wondered when Dean started following every bite with a sip of water.

But Dean wasn't in pain anymore. There was no more writhing and screaming, no more teeth biting through his tongue in an effort to not beg for Sam to fix it. Because Sam fixed it. This was better. It was. Even that little gurgling noise Dean made around his food... was making...

So, there were still some bugs to work out.

A horse. My kingdom for a horse...

"Dude, you're making a mess," Sam said, reaching for a dishcloth as water trickled toward the edge of the table. "How did you manage to spill?"

The plastic cup and the rag both hit the floor when Dean looked up from his plate, water trickling out the corner of his mouth. Dean dropped his fork and wiped at his chin with the back of his sleeve, eyes ducking away like a puppy that just messed on the floor. A second later, liquid sprayed out his nose, and he gagged, spitting a mouthful of chewed beef and potatoes onto the table.

Without hesitating, Sam clapped Dean on the back between his shoulder blades until Dean raised an arm, abruptly shrugging him off. When next he looked up, his eyes were watering, too, but for other reasons, red-rimmed and sullen. No accusation. They were way beyond that, but Sam didn't need Dean to accuse him in order to feel like a failure.

"Um, nothing to worry about." For the first time in forever, Sam didn't have words, stuttering and stammering like an idiot. "Doc... Doc said there could be some p-paralysis of smooth muscle. A little dysphagia."

"English," Dean growled, his voice wrecked, hands pressed flat against the table on both sides of his plate, chin tucked tight against his chest like he was fighting the worst case of heartburn in history.

"Difficulty swallowing."

"And it's just showing up now?"

"Could be scar tissue forming, disrupting the nerves we left in place. Doc said it could happen."

"And did," Dean paused like he was expecting a belch that never came. "Did Doc say how I'm supposed to eat?"

"No, but," Sam stooped to pick up the cup and cloth from the floor, "but we can try upping your dose of the serum. That might clear up the scarring. And until then..." he rubbed his hands on the leg of his jeans before standing. "We can try a liquid diet. If we blend it up enough, take small sips, maybe gravity..." Suddenly, he erupted, a flurry of action, spinning around and fumbling through the cupboards for the blender. He didn't look at Dean as he picked up his own plate off the table and added it to the blender in small doses with intermittent splashes of the powdered milk from the pitcher on the counter. "See? Nothing to it. A little bit of chipped beef. Milk. Mashed potatoes. Milk. Mix it all up. Exact same thing you were already eating."

He reached for the tumbler, wondering if there might be straws around somewhere, remembered the blue cup had been on the floor and grabbed the pink one instead. "Sorry, gotta use the pink cup. I'll do the dishes later..." He froze in his tracks, almost dropping the glass for the second time when he turned back to the table to find Dean watching him, red-rimmed eyes narrowed to slits, fork in hand, and his jaw working around a bite of food. As Sam watched, he shoveled another heaping bite in behind the first, clenched his teeth over the fork as he dragged it out slowly. "No. Don't... Dean! Spit it out."

Dean swallowed. His eyes closed the rest of the way, and time stuttered to a halt, the both of them waiting for the other cosmic shoe to drop. For a second, it seemed like they'd dodged a bullet.

They really had no right to hope for that.

A convulsion rolled through Dean's abdomen and up through his chest, but instead of gagging and purging the bolus from his throat, Sam watched as Dean locked his jaw down around it, swallowed again, and again, his Adam's apple jumping. Sam leapt forward and slammed the cup down on the table, shaking the whole thing hard enough that Dean jumped.

"Spit it out!"

Sam took him by the shoulders and shook. "I said spit, damn you!"

Dean's head fell back fast enough as almost to hit Sam in the nose, and his eyes flew open, gleaming but set and cold. Accusing.

Sam watched his brother's face go from drawn and pale to bright red before he arched off the chair and kicked out, falling to the floor as foam bubbled out of his nose and flecked over his cheeks. His chest heaved once, stopped short just halfway open, and his stomach roiled, jump, jump, jumping as his diaphragm tried to expand against the blockage. Another convulsion, and the foam turned to bright yellow.

The whole time, Dean's eyes remained fixed on Sam, nothing panicked or desperate, just acceptance, the world's biggest, 'told you so,' written on the plain of his forehead.

There was no good reason for Sam to panic or whatever it was that made him drag Dean off the floor and against his chest. No reason to try the Heimlich maneuver considering death really had no power anymore, but he did. He tried it. Again, and again until he heard a rib snap and Dean's head lolled back on his shoulder, dead, white eyes fixed on the ceiling.

Just another day in paradise.

There was even less reason for Sam to leap to his feet, dragging a sleeve over his eyes and sniffing. He didn't do that emo crap. Not anymore. But his hands wouldn't stop shaking while he paced around the corpse, no matter how deep he shoved them into his pockets, and finally he stomped out onto the porch, breath coming in gasps.

He yanked open the refrigerator door without unhooking the bungee cord holding it closed, completely ignoring when it snapped and recoiled against him like a kick to the gut. Doc's cataract covered eyes fixed blankly on him, mouth working in that ridiculous mimicry of speech that Sam used to find hilarious.

"Why can't I FIX HIM?!"

The head just spun around on its hook to face the back of the icebox, and Sam slammed the door. Then, because his hands were still shaking, he pounded dents into the metal, then kicked it, "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" before sliding down to the porch. Growling in frustration he smacked his head back against the metal for good measure, almost hard enough to make himself see stars.

"Newsflash, sonny boy. You're the Antichrist. Destruction is your M.O."

Sam yanked the headset out of his ear and flung it across the porch, stood again with a lurch.

He shrugged his shirt on straight, smoothed out the legs of his jeans, then squared up his shoulders. "Maybe so," he mumbled. "But I'm also a stubborn son of a bitch. And I don't hear any fat lady singing."

--

When Dean opened his eyes the next day, Sam was in a much better mood. He caught a glimpse of movement on the table, saw Dean's eyes flutter open and called over to him. "Morning sunshine. Breakfast in ten."

Dean groaned, but Sam hardly heard it, pouring milk and raw eggs into the blender. "Hear that? It's bacon. I dug some out of the freezer just for you." He picked up the frying pan and poured the contents, grease and all, into the blender. "Did you know this thing has a puree setting? I tried it while you were... indisposed. Put a whole fish in there. Came out pudding. Amazing what technology can do these days."

He poured the contents into a beaker and grabbed a large syringe, drawing the brown glop up into it by pulling back on the plunger slowly. "Gotta go slow. Don't wanna get too much air in it."

Turning around, he found Dean doing the familiar 'taking inventory pat down of his whole body. It didn't take him long to find the bandage on his stomach just below his ribcage on the left side. "Wh..." Cough. "What...?" Cough.

"Don't try to talk. Stomach acid has a pretty harsh effect on vocal chords. It'll take awhile for those to heal up." He strolled across the room, syringe in hand, poked at the bandage with a satisfied quirk of his head. "Some of my best work. I missed my calling, I think. So should've been a surgeon." He looked into Dean's eyes. "It's a stoma. Little window into your stomach." He raised his eyebrows and shoved the syringe into the port attached to the stoma, ignoring the way Dean grunted and tried to curl in on himself. "Breakfast time. Eat up. You keep that down, I'm gonna see how that blender handles M&M's." He emptied the syringe and stalked away, didn't check on Dean again for the rest of the morning.

--

Dean poked at the hole on his abdomen, 'window into his stomach', he felt…nothing. Zilch, zip, nada, not even a sting; it wasn't hot or cold, rough or smooth, just bare emptiness and yet it felt unbearable.

He tried to focus on a pain that should have been but wasn't there. He took a shaky breath, pushed down his panic, trail of invisible tears and excepted that there truly were worse things than being dead, and this, what he had become, what Sam represented, topped that list hands down.

He retched uncontrollably, then tried his best to remember if there'd been any runes in the piece of skin Sam had removed.

--

Dean insisted on being able to feed himself. So Sam let him, and he didn't. Feed himself that is.

Sam figured it out when Dean stopped needing help in the bathroom. By then he'd already lost weight. Though Cas was looking a little fatter.

--

The only time Dean moved out of his chair by the window was to sit on the porch and wait for Cas to do his business. He kept a pellet rifle at his side and kept the other wolves at bay with it.

Sam wanted to tell him he was only pissing them off, but it seemed to give Dean a purpose outside of carving himself to pieces. Sam couldn't help being just a little jealous of the wolf, but envy being one of the seven deadly sins, he figured it was probably in his nature. For some reason, Dean had a knack for bringing out the worst in Sam.

Almost like that was his plan.

Somehow, Sam had all the power in the world, except in Dean's world.

But he could get it back.

Maybe.

Probably.

Not.

--_**January, 2014-Cabin  
**_  
"Merry Christmas." It was weeks past Christmas, probably closer to Dean's birthday, but lately Dean had been working like he had a deadline, and Sam didn't want him to know if he was reaching it. Dean seemed set on leaving, eyes fixed inward or away, unfocused like he was listening for something Sam couldn't hear. And Sam... wasn't sure he'd try to stop him from going another time. Each time he did, he got less back.

He'd stopped being angry sometime after he locked Dean in the cellar. It was just gone, squeezed out one failure at a time.

Dean couldn't get the paper started, so Sam poked a hole in it for him, watched with something warm in his stomach as Dean peeled back the paper.

"You said you lost it."

"I'm the Antichrist. I lied." He was expecting some kind of reaction--any kind -- waited for the 'bitch' that never came, and choked on the 'jerk' he had planned in retort. He could only watch Dean roll the amulet around in his hand for a few minutes before he choked back his (hurt) pride and tried to force the issue. "So, what did you want it for?"

Dean nearly dropped the gift when he shuddered and started scratching a clear patch of skin above his hipbone, suddenly realizing he wasn't working, but Cas caught it on his nose, and Dean smiled half a smile as he pushed the thong back over the wolf's neck. "I don't remember."

"Oh." Sam didn't have any eggnog, but a pint of Jim Beam in the stoma, and Dean was out for the count. Sam tucked him in and pulled the sheet all the way up over his head. He looked like less of a corpse that way.

--

"So, there's no way to reverse it? No detox?"

"No, and if there was, he'd be nothing but a puddle of goo."

"Because he's so much more than that, now." It was the first time since the gift exchange that Sam had managed convincing sarcasm. Too bad it was based in fear and not the cocksure pride he was used to. That was gone along with the anger.

"Sarcasm. I can appreciate it. But you can't say I didn't warn you."

Sam shrugged. "True enough. Though I wouldn't be gloating if I was you. I can still stake you out on the lawn and let the wolves have you."

"In all honesty, I don't think I'd mind."

The beer bubbled up in his throat, in a whirlpool behind his soft palate, and it was warm from having been swallowed. He choked, breath clouding the bottle around his fingers. He was left holding the glass with a handprint in it, not unlike the scar on Dean's shoulder, one a sign of life, one a reminder of death, and neither where it belonged. "I think I know what you mean."

--

Dean was thinner, gaunt in places he'd only used to be pale, kinda like the wolves in the yard, hanging around just to be near him even though the last available prey had scampered away weeks ago. Thing was, Sam couldn't be entirely sure he wasn't the cause. Didn't know for sure he'd remembered to feed Dean often enough, stopped counting the number of times Dean wouldn't stop cutting at himself long enough to eat, and Sam gave up trying. The bangs hanging over his dark-lined eyes were evidence enough Sam had forgotten a few other things as well. Cleanliness, godliness... he wasn't really feeling either.

And it wasn't because he didn't care. Just cared too much. He wasn't trying to kill his brother. He just wasn't trying very hard to keep him alive anymore. What was the point if he couldn't fix him?

--

A day before his birthday, Dean stopped cutting, turned his face to the east, and waited.

--

When it happened, it was nothing Sam did. The time had long gone when he could bring himself to kill. It was more what he didn't do.

One minute Dean was sitting on the porch the pellet rifle cocked in his lap while Cas cross-tracked the dooryard. The next, the gun was empty on the porch, just like Dean's chair, and the wolves in the yard had blood on their snouts, long shreds of cannibalized meat in their teeth.

Dean waded out into them, calling for Cas, more emotion strangled in his voice than he'd had for months. Sam leapt from the porch, his every intention to call off the pack, long strides through snow, driven by a swift-pounding heart in his chest. Then Dean fell without a scream, and Sam's mouth snapped shut over the command.

Without a scream. Not a whimper. Only growls and wet, tearing.

They wouldn't touch him, the wolves. Living or dead, he was leader of their pack. But they were hungry... and Dean wasn't.

"Leave it." He was surprised how hard it was to say it, not surprised that they listened, backing away slowly, tails tucked between their legs.

Dean's eyes were fixed on the sky as Sam approached, one of his femoral arteries lacerated by the looks of the pool spreading beneath him. His gaze shifted in small increments until it settled on Sam, opaque and yet hollow, windows to what soul was left.

"Why did you stop them?"

"Why didn't you scream?"

They stared each other down neither finding the right answer.

"Why did you come here, Dean?"

"I made a promise."

Sam knew the one he meant. He swallowed and dropped to his knees, half set on slinging Dean over his shoulder and bringing him back inside to wait for the serum to kick in, get on with their lives. But he couldn't do it. All powerful, the scales balanced over his back, and he couldn't find the strength to stand under the weight of his brother. And there wasn't that much of him left.

Maybe he was staggering under the absence of his brother. He didn't know. What he knew was, he didn't use to be warm, and now he was. He didn't use to care, and now he did. He didn't use to understand what it was like to powerless, and now he was.

He once rode a pale horse. Now the horse rode him, but he still held the reins.

"Dean..." He resisted the urge to touch, hands hovering and then drawing away. "What do you want?"

"Tired, Sam."

Sam's breath stuttered in, a little gurgle on the tail end of it like it encountered a flood on the way down. Sam didn't think he remembered how to cry. "I know." His hands shaking, he glanced around him at the wolves waiting their turn. "I could... I could go."

"No. You do it."

"Dean, I ... can't." The irony wasn't lost on him, but he wasn't in a place to be amused by it. So what if he could smite the world with a sweep of his hand? This was so not the same thing.

"Please."

Sam nodded. Something dripped off his nose and plunked to the snow, warm enough to punch a hole through the hard crust, perfectly round. Pulling off a glove, he slid his hand under Dean's hair and down the back of his skull to the place where it met his neck. He knew it wouldn't finish Dean off, but all he had to do was turn off the lights. The wolves would make sure he didn't wake up again. He averted eyes for a second and when he looked back, found Dean's necklace spread in a loop in front of him, dangling from a bloody, shaking hand. "The key," Dean huffed.

Sam didn't understand but ducked his head and let it slide over.

"Thank you," he whispered.

Dean stared back, waiting. "Open the door, Sammy."

Sam fought not to look away, didn't want Dean to feel alone in the last minute. With a hard swallow, he whispered, "Happy Birthday," and ended it. One sharp crack, and it was over.

He expected it to hurt, had gotten used to the care creeping in around the edges of the hole in his heart. He hadn't expected to be thrown backwards into the snow, the force of a sledgehammer blow to his chest, or the searing white light screaming through him like an X-ray. Dean was barely limp in his arms before his body came apart, exploding in a shower of sparks, only the runes intact as they floated into the sky like bits of burning paper out of a fire. They didn't flutter apart. Instead, they linked together, glowing brighter with each connection, swirled around Sam and up into the sky. The snow blasted away from him in a wall of white, clearing all the way to the ground in a vortex. Every last ounce of breath rushed out of him and into the vacuum, chasing the white light at the end.

Then the light went out, and so did he.

--  
_  
"I knew you'd come through."_

"I don't understand."

"C'mon, Cas. The messages under the door. The spell to draw out the poison. The sacrifice. And then showing up out there in the woods to save me. You've gotta be the hardest working guardian angel in Heaven."

"Dean, I went to the woods to save you, but the rest... I failed. What happened on that mountain was an act of God, not me."

"So, you finally met the Big Guy? Way to go."

"I have not... met the Big Guy. I only know His work when I see it."

"But why? Why would He save me? And Sam?"

"Because you believed it was possible."

"Huh."

"Indeed."

"Y'know what else I believe?"

"What?"

"I believe He's not finished yet."

"I believe you could be right."  
  
--_**Spring, 2014  
**_Pink flowers. When Sam opened his eyes and found Dean sitting beside him with a mug of hot coffee in a field of pink flowers, he knew they were not in Heaven. Dean's Heaven would be nothing but winding roads and greasy hamburgers. Morning glories were Mother Nature's idea of fun. He didn't have time to say as much before Dean shoved the mug of coffee toward him.

"Better drink up. We slept through winter, so unless you got spare tires for the Mule, it's going to be a long walk." He turned to Sam, hazel eyes glistening and clear.

"I take it you're not tired anymore?"

"Not even a little."

"And we're not going to talk about this, are we?"

"Nope."

"Well, then," Sam stood, not a little surprised when his joints cracked and popped all the way to upright. Gesturing down the mountain with a sweeping wave of his arms. "Our chariot awaits."

When "Wayward Son" started blaring from inside the cabin, he paused. "I don't think I'm quite back to normal yet," he speculated with a smirk.

"What makes you say that?"

Nodding toward the house, Sam said, "I still kinda wanna kill that cat."

Dean huffed. "That makes two of us, but if we did, who would keep Doc company?"

This time Sam stopped so abruptly Dean almost knocked into him. Coffee was spilled, and since Sam was pretty sure it was coffee from Heaven, that was probably a sin. "Shit. Doc." With a squeamish shrug he asked, "D'you think we should...?"

"Nah. It's spring. Lotta hungry bears in these parts."

"And wolves," Sam chuckled.

"Those, too."

When they were a quarter mile away, hands deep in their pockets and morning glories crushed underfoot, Sam said, "I know we're not supposed to talk about it, but... Do you still have the piercings? Because there was one..." He squirmed a little, hands pushed down into his pockets as far as they would go.

"Don't ask..."

"...don't tell."

"Amen."

The End

**AN:** **don't forget to check out the art for this over at lj. It's amazing! Thanks so much for reading. You made it, you deserve a medal!**


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